Crawl of Time
by EudaimonArisornae
Summary: Twenty years after Zoro's death, Sanji becomes acquainted with a mysterious man named Isshin, who has recently defeated Hawk-Eyes and acquired the coveted title of "strongest swordsman." Uncanny similarities between Isshin and the supposedly long-dead marimo keep piling up, until one day, an unbelievable truth is revealed that shatters the foundation of Sanji's world...
1. Chapter 1

Title: Crawl of Time

Rating: M

Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece.

* * *

**CHAPTER ONE**

**_Aboard the Thousand Sunny_**

**_Over twenty years ago_**

Sanji and the shitty swordsman were tucked away in a dark corner of a secluded part of the Sunny, deep in the bowels of the ship. They were in the sweltering climate of a summer island and it was ungodly hot—too hot to do this sort of thing—but it was so hard to find a place to sneak away alone, and neither of them could hold out until they made port again.

Slick with sweat, their bare skin burned as they pressed against each other, lost in mind-numbingly pleasurable sensations.

Every time Sanji screwed around with the swordsman, he always felt like the time around him distorted and he could no longer tell how many minutes or hours had gone by. And for some really stupid reason, he never seemed to care until suddenly, they were left panting next to each other, the cook feeling breathless and exhausted, and he realized that the sun was already coming up.

Right now, though, as they frantically lurched their bodies back and forth, desperate to reach that climatic moment when they both briefly lost their senses, Sanji once again was not even the slightest bit concerned with the passage of time. There was a hysterical pressure building in the lower part of his abdomen, and all he could think about was just how much longer he could hold back until it finally erupted.

For a moment, he tried to focus on the green-haired man who was staring forward at him, with an expression so intense, he could barely tell if the other man was enjoying it or not, until a deep cry erupted from his throat accompanied by fingernails digging into his flesh that made a tremor run up and down Sanji's spine.

Zoro ran a rough hand, slippery from sweat, through Sanji's hair, forcefully tugging at the strands. The cook clutched onto the other man's broad shoulders a bit more tightly, bringing his smoldering body closer to him as he felt himself starting to lose control. No matter how hard he tried, there was no way he could hold back the explosion building within himself any longer.

* * *

**_Fisherman 9, the artificial island in the center of All Blue_**

**_Sanji's house_**

**_Present day_**

Sanji awoke with a shout—probably not unlike the cry of ecstasy he had surely let out all those years ago, when the events of the dream had taken place. It was such an old memory, and yet his body still seemed to remember the burning details that had left him barely able to control himself all those years ago.

He sat up, sighing heavily as he wiped his forehead with his wrist. He was unsurprised to find he was dripping in sweat; it had been an intense dream, after all.

_More of those shitty dreams,_ he thought dolefully. It had been awhile, but it still left him feeling like a wrench had been thrown inside of his chest. All these shitty memories that his mind wouldn't let him forget. But it was a dull, distant ache that he would push out of his mind shortly. With another sigh, he sluggishly pulled himself out of bed.

As he had predicted, the tightness in his chest began to dissipate as soon as Sanji began getting ready, although the memory of slick skin and a haunting, deep voice still lingered uncomfortably near.

Sanji's morning routine was repetitious, simple and efficient. It was the same actions he had repeated every morning for the last eighteen years or so, with little deviation.

_What a worthless mind, that can't stop thinking about shitty things that happened so long ago_, he thought, as he absentmindedly smoothed back his hair. So much had changed since then...

Sure, his hair still had a tinge of blonde left in it, but the vibrant yellow had turned into something far more muted, and snow-white hair intermingled with the lackluster gold strands. It was only slightly longer than it used to be. It didn't fit him quite as well, but it made styling it a little less work; this way, he did not need to spend so much time on it. Somewhere along the way, it had just become too troublesome.

Same with his goatee; it was now a color more resemblant of salt-and-pepper, and he had stopped sculpting it so carefully long ago. And shape-wise, it was just a simple, tidy rectangle; nothing fancy, but he had to look at least a little bit suave, after all. Even if most days, he found himself wondering if it really mattered, anyway.

His face was getting pretty well-weathered, but he had spent a lot of his life on a ship, so that was to be expected. When he was younger, he never would have imagined the deep lines that would appear around his mouth. Or the wrinkles etched along his conspicuously tired eyes... Ah, but that deadened look in his eyes, he was certain, was probably unrelated to age.

By the time he was through getting ready, he had finally cast off the memory of the dream. Next, he had to set out for the market. If he did everything the same way as he had the day before, it was sure to be a good one; and if he didn't prepare to open his restaurant properly, he wouldn't be able to please his customers.

When he had first opened his restaurant, Trois Bleu, the artificial island in the center of All Blue known as Fisherman 9 was nothing but a small fishing district, barely inhabited by anyone. Although it was the most convenient island in All Blue for travelers to reach, only a few lived there, and even fewer came to visit—just some fishing boats, normally.

But despite all of the warnings that no customers would come, Sanji started a restaurant. He didn't really care if no one came, to be honest; if he wound up living his life in a shabby old shack of a restaurant with only the occasional fisherman stopping in, that was satisfactory. There was nothing else he had to do; nowhere else he had to go.

Yet, by a decade later, the island had undergone an amazing transformation.

And eighteen years later, no one would ever guess that the New World mecca for fresh seafood and fine cuisine used to be a shitty, barren little place no one would have given a second glance.

As Sanji put on his suit coat, he paused for a moment to open the top drawer of the dresser in his bedroom. For a moment, he simply stared inside of it, frowning slightly, his brow deeply furrowed. Then, he pulled a black, cloth-like item out, and quickly tucked it in an inside pocket.

Closing the drawer and quickly exiting the bedroom, he spared one more thought for his feverish dream... _Something must be wrong with me,_ he thought to himself, _still having dreams like that about a person who's been dead for twenty years._

* * *

**_Sanji's restaurant, Trois Bleu_**

**_Same day, late afternoon_**

No matter how many times he repeated the scenario, waiting to open his restaurant was always the most excruciatingly slow part of Sanji's day. After spending his morning shopping and doing the prep work for the meals they would serve for dinner that night, he and his staff had completed the finishing touches, and now they were simply waiting for it to be time to open and for the customers to start flooding in.

He set three steaming plates of food in front of his waitress and his two cooks, who were seated together around a small table in the back. The cook didn't really like to start them off working on an empty stomach, and it was a good opportunity for him to make sure his sharpness for putting together meals never dulled; especially since these days, most of his time was spent at the front of the restaurant, instead of in the kitchen.

As they ate, Sanji took a seat at his desk in the back corner of the room, going over menial paperwork as he sipped on a cup of tea.

"I can't believe it!" Planchet, the youngest of the two cooks, cried out suddenly. "Did you guys hear about this?" He held up the newspaper for the other two seated at the table to see. Sanji glanced up indifferently, adjusting a pair of reading glasses balanced on his nose, before returning to his papers.

"People have been talking about it all day, of course I've heard about it," Mouston, the other cook, sniffed disdainfully.

"What's it say, Planchet?" the young woman seated at the table, Kitty, asked curiously, as she squinted at the text.

"Somebody actually defeated Hawk-Eyes!" Planchet exclaimed.

Sanji froze momentarily, his eyes flitting toward the newspaper.

Kitty pressed a finger on her lips. "Hawk-Eyes... I feel like I've heard that name."

"Of course you've heard of him," Mouston scoffed. "He's Dracule Mihawk."

"Oh, yes, him!" Kitty said, snapping her fingers.

"Yeah, him!" Planchet exclaimed, waving a hand animatedly as he spoke. "He's one of the strongest men in the world and he uses an enormous sword..."

"He _was_ one of the strongest men in the world, but he's nothing but an old geezer now. It was only a matter of time before somebody one-upped him," Mouston interjected, shrugging as he took a bite of seared fish.

"What do you mean it's not surprising? He's been the strongest swordsman for as long as I can remember!" Planchet argued.

Sanji started slightly as the words _strongest swordsman_; an involuntary reaction from not hearing such a phrase spoken for so many years now, when he used to hear it so often. He felt the hair on the back of his neck raise.

As his staff continued chatting, Sanji kept glancing at the paper, struggling to make out what was on the front page, while trying to feign disinterest. But the curiosity was overwhelming... He had to know who it was, what man had snatched up the dream that would have belonged to that shitty swordsman, if only the past had been a little less cruel.

"See, there's a picture of Hawk-Eyes right after the battle here," Planchet added, setting the paper down and sliding it across the table, so that Sanji could no longer see it.

"His eye is sliced open!" Kitty cried out in horror, averting her gaze. "Why would they put a picture of that? It's too gruesome to show in the paper..."

"Tch, what an insult," Mouston smirked. "He took the eye from Hawk-Eyes."

"I want to see the guy who defeated him though," Planchet said, snatching the paper back and flipping through the pages to see if there was another picture. "Ah, here he is! … Too bad though, it's not from after his fight with Hawk-Eyes, it's just an old picture of him."

Planchet held up the picture for everyone to see. This time, Sanji did not try to feign indifference, as he stared at the photo. He'd seen him in the papers before... He was a nitouryuu user who always kept his face almost completely covered, and wore a ridiculous, feathered black headdress.

"His name is Isshin," Planchet went on. "The article says that he's been increasing in fame over the past 10 years or so. Under the old system, he would've probably had around a 100 million beli bounty!"

"That sounds high, but was it a lot for bounties?" Kitty asked.

Planchet turned to face Sanji. "Is it, boss?"

Sanji nodded slowly, twirling a pencil in between his fingers thoughtfully. "Yeah, it's certainly not a small amount."

"I thought so!" the energetic young man exclaimed. "But you were a pirate, too, weren't you, boss? Was your bounty that high?"

Suddenly, Mouston slammed a hand down on the table, making the plates rattle. "What the hell is your problem? You know the boss doesn't like to talk about being a—"

"Ah, I'm sorry!" Planchet apologized before the other young man could finish his sentence. "I wasn't thinking." He turned toward Sanji. "I apologize, I didn't mean to pry."

Sanji exhaled slowly. "I don't mind if you ask a question. I just don't like telling tales about it, that's all. I'm not interested in story-telling." After a pause, he smirked slightly as he pulled off his reading glasses. "Yeah, my bounty was higher than that."

"That's impressive! I guess I expect no less of our boss, though," Planchet smiled brightly.

"If the boss had a higher bounty, then I bet he could've defeated Hawk-Eyes," Mouston declared boldly.

Sanji turned his gaze to his other chef. "I could've put up a good fight... But I don't know if I could have ever defeated him," he replied matter-of-factly.

"But the bounty—"

"It's meaningless to use bounty to determine strength," Sanji cut him off. "Hawk-Eyes was strong, and old men with that kind of strength don't tend to get weaker." He averted his gaze to the pencil in his hands once again, studying it as he paused for a moment to gather his thoughts. "If anything, they turn into fearsome monsters, who would seem nearly invincible to most."

"That so..." Mouston said, a bead of sweat noticeably trickling down his forehead.

Sanji nodded. Then he abruptly set down his pencil and rose to his feet. "Now come on, everyone. Hurry up and finish eating. It's only fifteen minutes till opening time."

With that, Sanji exited the room and made his way toward the kitchen. Between his incredibly vivid dream and the news of Hawk-Eyes' defeat, he suddenly felt like he was going to need a drink before the evening was over.

* * *

**_A hotel room on a random island in the New World_**

**_Over twenty years ago_**

The first time it had happened, the two men had somehow drunkenly caroused their way into an inn. Sanji had a vague recollection of the elderly innkeeper giving them a dark look of disapproval, but he took their money and wordlessly slid them a key to a room at the far back.

Sanji hadn't known what to expect, exactly; he was considerably far worse off than the swordsman, and had long since stopped thinking of the consequences. It was awkward and cumbersome, but the two men sloppily fumbled through it, and even beyond the inebriated veil that snuffed out most of his memories of that night, he never quite forgot the sounds of their loud and completely uninhibited voices, crying out in unison.

When he woke up the next morning, head and body seemingly competing over what hurt more, he was staring at the swordsman's snoring face for a full minute before the realization of what they had done hit him.

He couldn't quite recall why their argument over drink after endless drink had someone lead to them barely being able to rip themselves away from each other by the end of the night.

That realization thundering to the forefront of his already throbbing cranium was probably the worst feeling he had ever felt in his life. He felt ill, desperately uncertain of what to do with himself. What this meant about him. How the hell he was supposed to cram this new event in his definition of himself.

And even worse, from what he could remember of what they did, it also might have been the best damn thing he had ever felt in his life.

Well, however he felt about it over time, whatever nearly-debilitating identity crisis it might have caused for him for awhile afterward, it sure as hell wasn't the last time it happened.

* * *

**_The alleyway of a shitty island in the New World_**

**_Many weeks later—over twenty years ago_**

"You suck, shit-cook," Zoro exhaled, as he tried to catch his breath. He was laying with his back on the ground, panting heavily.

Sanji was collapsed against a wall nearby. "It's your shitty timing that got us into this mess."

After they rested for a few minutes, Sanji finally felt his heart rate start to relax. It had been a strenuous battle, and it had been damn long. Still, the euphoric sensation of the endorphins charging his body had not totally left him, so he was feeling pretty good.

"Now that this mess is over, we're probably going to stay here a few days," Sanji said.

"Ah, I don't see why we wouldn't," Zoro panted back at him.

"When we were headed here, we passed an inn," Sanji mentioned suddenly.

He wasn't sure why he said it, or what he was hoping for; they had had one sloppy, drunken night together before. They hadn't mentioned it again. But for some reason, the energy swimming through his veins made him feel horny. And shit, if it was the marimo, there wouldn't be need for social pleasantries or tenderness or even conversation, probably. Still, if he had thought about it half a second longer, he probably would have stifled the idiotic words tumbling out of his mouth.

"Ah, let's go there."

The reply was surprising—but it was the lack of pause between his comment and the response that nearly made his heart come to a screeching halt.

"I didn't say I wanted to go with you!" Sanji barked reflexively, trying to cover his embarrassment.

"Then why the hell bring it up, you damn dartboard-brow?" Zoro replied, scowling.

* * *

**_A seedy hotel_**

**_A short while later—over twenty years ago_**

As the door to the dingy hotel room clicked closed behind him, a slight panic started to rise in Sanji's chest.

_How the hell am I supposed to do this sober? _he thought, realizing he didn't quite recall a lot of the details from their last encounter. He swallowed hard as he stared at the swordsman, who was already starting to remove some of his clothes.

_How the hell did we start last time, anyway? _he tried to remember. The evening was mostly a blur though, and he wasn't even sure who the hell had started it; he just knew that at some point, a dominant tongue was crammed into his mouth, and powerful hands were groping below his waist, and he was clutching back, desperately wanting to feel him, too.

Suddenly Sanji felt a pull in his trousers, and a wave of heat seemed to rush through his lower abdomen and groin. He inhaled sharply.

"What?" Zoro asked, suddenly right next to him, his face to close that Sanji could feel his breath on his face.

The urge became more powerful, and the answer to the question no longer seemed that hard (likely because now, _other _things were). It didn't need to be thought about or planned. His instinct was already kicking in and _shit_, did he want it.

...And _oh shit_, did he get it.

When they were done, Sanji found his conscience being gradually pulled back into reality, until finally he realized it was just him lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, with a snoring swordsman next to him.

_What the hell do I do now? _he wondered; sharing the bed with him seemed a little strange, but the thought of getting up and leaving seemed wrong, too.

Even though they had been all over each other a little while ago, it was a different matter to feel the swordsman's thigh resting against him, with an elbow just touching his ribs. He wasn't grabbing at him or anything, but there was contact; the bed wasn't large enough to allow anything otherwise, unless they both laid right at the edge. And clearly, Zoro wasn't doing that.

Maybe Sanji wouldn't have worried so much about it, though, if he had known that wouldn't be the extent of their touching. Like how once he finally drifted to sleep, they would unconsciously roll even nearer to one another.

And just how much he would loathe himself in the morning—all the while, craving more and more.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

_**Town Center of Fisherman 9, the artificial island in the center of All Blue**_

_**A few weeks later**_

For one day every year, the entire world slipped into celebration, and Fisherman 9 was no exception. On that day, the local eateries closed their doors so they could host food stalls in the town center, where an elaborate festival was held.

The festival celebrated the disbanding of the world government. Really, there had been a more momentous date that had probably marked its true end; but those details would likely be lost to history, and the only thing that mattered was that the frayed threads of the government were too weakened to keep it woven together anymore. Thus, with nothing but a few whimpers of defeat from the world leaders, it had fallen.

When it was announced to world, there had been some trepidation at first; but as the years past, the revelries had increased, and now it was a holiday of sorts.

Today marked the nineteenth year.

To Sanji, the festival was utterly loathsome. The annual reminder made his mind wander to dreadful events; a cruel memento that chipped away at him. But no matter how he felt about the celebration, it was futile to resist it. He was not only a chef, but a proprietor, and he had to take responsibility by having his restaurant participate as well. Besides, the festival drew in more visitors in one day than he usually saw in a month. If his restaurant didn't participate, he would only be cutting off his nose to spite his face.

Not to mention that Fisherman 9 was becoming world-renowned for its cuisine. It wasn't only the Trois Bleu—numerous other establishments also boasted having the finest cuisine, including restaurants from the other islands in All Blue that only came into town for the night of the festival. With all the competition, Sanji had to participate and show them all that his restaurant and his chefs were the best.

The pace had been non-stop for more of the night. Mouston and Planchet cooked furiously, as Sanji and Kitty struggled to take in the orders. Even though they were more accustomed to the fine-dining style of service, the four worked like a well-oiled machine as they kept up with customer demand at the food stall. By the time the dinner rush was over and the customers in need of food started to thin out, they were all exhausted.

"I still can't believe we're this close to the main stage," Planchet remarked, tiredly collapsing on a cooler as he beckoned in the direction of the nearby stage, where several young men were currently performing. "Even if we're too busy to pay much attention, the music's a nice change of pace."

Sanji nodded, rolling up his sleeves. "I told you I got us a good spot," he said with a tired smile. He glanced toward the stage, noticing that more and more people were flocking toward it—for the next act, no doubt.

"Yeah, and we got a lot of customers for it, too!" Kitty chimed in.

"Ah, we did indeed," Sanji agreed, as he warily eyed a group of shady-looking men, who stood out even among the mass of people headed toward the stage. Although they weren't doing anything wrong, Sanji intuitively sensed they would be trouble.

"Tch, we would have gotten that many customers no matter where we were. After all, we're serving the best food here," Mouston declared proudly. "But I agree, it's a nice location."

"Well, at this time of night, that should have been the last of the big waves. We should probably prepare to close down soon," Sanji commented, noticing that a few of the stalls along the road were already beginning to pack up. "Mouston, Kitty-san, you two keep handling the customers. Planchet, let's start cleaning up and packing what we can."

"Yes, boss!" the three chimed in unison.

As he cleaned, Sanji couldn't help but steal glances over at the stage. The music, which had temporarily been halted as they cleared the stage for the next act, had just started up again. And this act was his personal favorite each year—energetic music, accompanied by beautiful dancing girls.

Ah, the lovely choreography of the dancing girls. It seemed there were more and more of them each year. In his younger days, he would have swooned over them all night, trying to make contact whenever he could, unable to hold himself back while he was near them.

But, time changed all things, and even his lovesick nature was not immune. Now he simply watched from afar, as they sensually shook hips and swayed curvaceous, elegant bodies, beautifully swinging to the thunderous cadence. It didn't give him the same kind of unbearable delight it used to, but it was still a pleasant sight.

And then, toward the back of the mass around the stage, a cluster of people suddenly began to flee. There was only one thing it could be; Sanji sighed heavily as he caught the telltale tones of the sound of a scuffle breaking out.

"Get your hands off of them!" he heard a young man shout. A moment later, three large men appeared at the edge of the crowd, punching, shoving and kicking, and making their way toward the direction of the grill where Mouston was still cooking.

They were fighting, however shitty of a fight it was; so bad, in fact, Sanji could not quite tell who was fighting whom. At any rate, it didn't really matter... until one of the men shoved the other two toward the grill. Their bodies slammed into it with a loud boom, and the grill started to topple over.

Sanji was already starting to react, but before he could make a move, his crew was already in position. Mouston caught the edge of the grill, quickly shoving it back to its upright position before it had a chance to topple over completely. Simultaneously, Planchet leapt toward the grill edge, clutching two plates, and caught the steaming pieces of fish and meat before they fell to the ground.

"Good work, men," Sanji called out, smirking slightly as he crossed his arms. "I wouldn't expect anything less of my cooks. But Planchet, you better pick up the pace—I saw you almost drop the last piece."

"Ah, you noticed, huh?" Planchet said sheepishly. "Well, don't worry, it won't happen again!"

"Now, to deal with this..." Sanji muttered, turning back toward the fighting men. Now there were more of them who had joined the affray, including some of the young punks that he had observed earlier—he knew he had a bad feeling about them.

Fisherman 9 was normally a relatively peaceful place, but the festival always brought in these kinds of elements. Yet another reason for him to despise it...

The music dropped, and the beat started to thump a bit harder; Sanji sprang into action, kicking a large, bulky man to the side just as he was about to slam into an innocent passerby. Noting the bulky man was unconscious, the chef took another annoyed step toward the direction of the rest of the pandemonium. It was hard to tell just how many people were involved at this point, but anyone who looked like they were contributing to this ridiculous disturbance was fair game to him, as far as he was concerned.

"You shitty young kids, always starting this kind of shit, year after year," Sanji called out with irritation. He shoved his hands into his pockets, heaving a sigh.

And then, he was upon them, showing them the reason he was once known as Black Leg.

One, two, three went down in an instant. "Oi!" he shouted loudly, trying to get their attention, a dark expression in his eyes. "I'm warning you to knock it off, shitty punks. If you don't, I'm prepared to take all of you down."

He paused for a moment, crossing his arms as he quietly scanned the group. Apparently no one had paid any attention to him, nor had they noticed their fallen comrades; the clash raged on, with not a single man backing off.

"Tch, have it your way," he sighed, returning his hands to his pockets. He thought he saw a flash of black in the periphery of his vision, but he didn't have time to confirm what he had actually seen, as two men, arms angrily locked in battle, nearly rammed into the food stall across from his own. Sanji leapt toward them and aimed his kick to shoot them back toward the rest of the melee. With satisfaction, Sanji noted that their flying bodies also knocked down a third man.

"Too easy," he muttered. Then he heard a scuffle behind him, and turned to attack, leg raised. But to his surprise, two tough-looking men were already laying on the ground, and instead of connecting with flesh, the sole of his shoe connected with the cold steel of a blade.

The sensation momentarily stunned him—not because it was particularly physically jarring, but rather due to the assault of nostalgia on his brain. His shoe, being stopped dead in its tracks by a sword so stubbornly held in place. Very few men had been able to successfully block him in that way.

For a moment, the booming music that had been deafeningly loud just moments before suddenly seemed muted to his ears, as he took in the man who had so obstinately and thoroughly stopped him.

The man was enshrouded in shadows, so it was hard to make out his features. In fact, all he could tell was that the man appeared to be clad entirely in black, with some kind of large hat or hood over his head. From his attire to the might behind his presence, nothing about him resembled the rest of the delinquents involved in the scuffle. The man stared in the cook's direction for an excruciatingly long moment, sword still held firmly in place even after Sanji had pulled his leg away.

He couldn't see his eyes—couldn't see anything but his mouth, in fact—but the blatant stare was making him uncomfortable. Sanji started to resume his attack, but suddenly the man re-sheathed his sword. "Oi, I'm not one of these kids," he called out. His voice was low and coarse, and his tone sounded a bit rude.

Then, before Sanji could respond, the man drew his sword again, diving back in toward the commotion. Sanji watched him for a moment, entranced as the man in black used the flat end of the blade to immobilize several of the brawling men in mere moments. As the light hit him better, Sanji realized who he was looking at; this was a very famous man in front of him.

The most telltale sign was a bulky headdress made out of black feathers covering most of his head and the back of his neck—not a hat, like Sanji had first suspected. While the ridiculous ornament would have probably kept the man's eyes sufficiently hidden, he also kept all of his face covered with what looked like some kind of cloth mask, which only had a single opening exposing his mouth and the nostrils of his nose. Other than that, none of his facial features could be discerned.

On his body, he wore a black cloak with long, flowing sleeves that his hands seemed to disappear underneath. But as the man's katana zinged through the air at an incredible speed, Sanji noticed that even the hand clutching a sword was encased in a black glove. Beneath the cloak, Sanji caught a glimpse of the scabbard of a second sword peeking out from underneath; a nitouryuu user.

This man was, undoubtedly, the swordsman Isshin. He was the man who had defeated Hawk-Eyes Mihawk...

The man who had recently been bestowed the title _world's strongest swordsman._

But he didn't have time to stare for long; Sanji had to turn his attention back to the fight. He knocked out a few more of the young men, all the while stealing glances at the man in black near him, who was systematically knocking out the rest of the unruly men with the flat end of a single blade. The music pounded in Sanji's ears, and the sound of the bass felt like it was emphasizing each pump of his rapidly beating heart.

Finally, the remainder of the men fighting had either been knocked out or fled. Then the song ended, and the music switched to a slightly slower tune. Sanji adjusted his collar uncomfortably; for some reason, the tune was unpleasantly foreboding.

The swordsman Isshin had already started to walk away. Impulsively, Sanji rushed toward him, grabbing him by his shoulder just as he passed in front of the food stall for the Trois Bleu.

The man in black whirled around, regarding Sanji for a long moment.

"Oi, I know you," Sanji said.

The only part of the other man's face he could see was his jaw, which visibly clenched when Sanji spoke. The man in black yanked his arm away from Sanji's grasp, a bit forcefully. "The hell are you talking about," he murmured with irritation, taking a step back.

Sanji's mouth opened slightly in surprise—although it was barely audible over the music, again, Sanji noticed his voice was unexpectedly low and gruff. Then he realized that he had blurted something strange.

"Ah, I meant I've seen you in the papers," the chef explained.

The clenched jaw relaxed slightly. "Hah, what about it?" he asked, a bit derisively.

_What the hell_, Sanji thought, as he felt the hair on the back of his neck raise in irritation. It was an unexpected and unpleasant sensation; he seldom let himself feel such a poignant emotion toward anyone these days.

The bass pumped louder; to Sanji, it seemed to resonate almost painfully in his chest.

"I'll be going then," the swordsman Isshin said roughly, turning his back toward him.

"Oi, hold on a second."

"What?" he asked, turning his head just enough so Sanji could see that grim mouth again.

Sanji turned his head toward the food stall. "Oi, Kitty-chan, bring me an order of the gigot de lotte."

"Yes, boss," she called out.

"What are you doing?" Isshin asked, turning slightly more toward Sanji.

Kitty quickly approached them, a bag in her hands. "Here you are, boss, the gigot de lotte." She glanced up at the man in black and squeaked in surprise, a look of recognition and fear in her eyes. "Boss, isn't this..."

Ignoring her, Sanji grabbed the bag from her hands and held it out toward Isshin. "As thanks for helping us deal with those shitty men."

"Tch, I don't want it," he grumbled. "Besides, I wasn't doing it for your sake."

"I don't care what your reason was," Sanji replied peevishly, taking a step closer, practically shoving the bag toward the other man's chest. "But it helped me out, so I'm offering you a meal. Just take the damn thing."

Jaw clenched once again, the man in black reluctantly reached out and grabbed it. "Fine, then," he said, turning on his heel and walking away before Sanji could say another word.

"Wow, was that really him? The swordsman Isshin?" Planchet called out as soon as the man in black had disappeared, running up to Sanji and Kitty.

Sanji nodded affirmatively. "Ah, had to be."

"What's he like? Was he strong?"

"It's hard to say, since he was just taking out a bunch of shitty delinquents," Sanji said thoughtfully. Then he thought about the feeling of the sword beneath his shoe again. Granted, it wasn't his most powerful kick, but the bottom of his foot still tingled a little bit from the impact.

The chef frowned slightly. "I can tell you he has a shitty personality, though."

* * *

_**Sanji's home**_

_**A few hours later**_

After the festival was over, Sanji stood in his kitchen, tiredly pouring himself a glass of bourbon. Normally, he preferred to stick to wine, but he felt like he wanted something a little bit stiffer tonight.

He opened the back door that led to his patio, glass in hand, and took a seat in one of the chairs outside. His house was located just a short walk from his restaurant, at the edge of Fisherman 9, so he had a perfect view of the sea, and it was one of his more favorable places to pass the time. Whether he was feeling content or troubled, it was peaceful.

Not that there were many days he could say he felt content, he realized wryly.

The cook was annoyed that he felt unsettled; the swordsman Isshin was no one to him, and it was just by chance that he happened to be at the festival tonight, but for some inexplicable reason, his very presence deeply disturbed him.

He finished the glass of bourbon, followed by a second and a third, and by the end of it, his mind had definitely shifted down a lane of his memories that he preferred to keep enshrouded in darkness. He closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the sea, wishing he didn't recall the wretched details of the past quite so vividly.

* * *

_**Thousand Sunny**_

_**Two days before Zoro's death—over twenty years ago**_

A raucous cough seized Sanji's body. He leaned back against the wall, hand over his mouth, trying to mute the obnoxious sound. His still-burning cigarette dangled loosely in his other hand.

Although the cook didn't hear the approaching footsteps, he could feel Zoro's burning stare, laced with irritation and judgment. The swordsman stopped a couple of feet away from him. As Sanji glanced at him, eyes watering, he noticed the other man cross his arms, frowning deeply.

"You should listen to Chopper," Zoro said lowly.

"The hell are you talking about?" Sanji asked when he finished coughing, glaring at Zoro as he put his cigarette back into his mouth.

Zoro looked away, a disgusted scowl on his face. "You're a dumbass if you need to ask that."

"How am I a dumbass for not being able to read your mind, shitty swordsman?"

His brow twitching in irritation, Zoro took a stormy step forward and snatched the cigarette from between his lips. "This, you stupid ero-cook."

"Oi, what's your problem, marimo?" Sanji protested angrily, grabbing Zoro's arm. He irritably grabbed the cigarette back, taking a quick drag, despite the fact that he was barely over his coughing fit.

Zoro's vehement stare was more than unsettling.

"Seriously, what the hell?" Sanji asked again, taking a peevish drag.

Suddenly, the swordsman turned his back to him and stormed away. "I'm talking about when Chopper told you to stop smoking, dumbass," he called back over his shoulder, drawing out the word dumbass in a way that made the vein in Sanji's forehead throb. "What was that, half a year ago? And look at you now, coughing like a damned old man."

* * *

_**Trois Bleu**_

_**Two days after the festival**_

Sanji didn't find himself asking for a lot in his life nowadays, but then, he didn't expect a lot in return either.

Each and every day was bleak and utterly without anything worth mentioning. Each day just like the one before—humdrum and unsatisfying. Why, the only reason he closed the restaurant one day of the week was to break up the monotony.

The easy excuse was to say it was to give the staff a day of rest—but really, he could easily hire one or two more people and rotate their shifts, and then Trois Bleu could be open all the time. There was no grand reason he couldn't be there everyday. He was only in his forties; he probably still had a dishearteningly long lifespan in front of him.

But the truth was that he used to stay open all the time, and the endless days all seemed to roll together. Even on the nights he could fall asleep, the respite was hardly enough of a bookmark to separate the span between days.

The abysmally long rest-of-his-life continued on in an infinite haze, tinged with grey tones and fog, and it was devoid of any colors of joy to paint it into something that wasn't completely insufferable.

Sometimes there were events that seems to puncture through the blanket of monotony that utterly consumed the portrait of his existence, but those events were fleeting, and usually brimming with agony.

Things that made him feel anything—fear, anger, satisfaction—blinked in and out of his existence almost faster than he could notice. And then he had returned to his state of nothingness and detachment—back to the monotony of his flat-lining life.

Recalling what had transpired at the festival a couple of nights ago, Sanji realized he had experienced such a moment, when he had accidentally met a man he never actually expected to see. (Who he probably never wanted to see, deep down, but he wasn't able to be quite that honest with himself about it.) Although it fleetingly tinged his world with a trace of color, however, by the next morning, it was back to that same tedium. Surely, such a moment would not happen again for quite some time. It was best that way, even if it was ineffably dreary.

And then suddenly, the man who had recently been dubbed the new strongest swordsman was inside of his restaurant, one hand casually resting on the hilt of a sword as he waited to be seated.

Sanji swallowed hard as he held out a hand in front of Kitty, who had been hesitantly stepping forward to greet the customer.

"It's alright, I'll handle this one," Sanji said to her.

Confidently, he strolled toward Isshin, putting on his best proprietor's smile. He was already prepared for him to be difficult, if their brief conversation the other night had been any indication. Still, he wondered why his heart seemed to thunder in his chest as he approached him.

"Welcome to Trois Bleu," he greeted, elegantly outstretching his arm toward the back corner of the restaurant. "Please allow me to show you to your seat."

Isshin stared at him for an awkwardly long moment; or at least, Sanji thought he was staring at him, and it sure as hell felt awkward to _him_. It was hard to tell where the other man's eyes were focused, since Sanji couldn't see anything beyond the black mask and shadows from the ridiculous, feathered headdress.

Finally, Isshin nodded, and allowed himself to be guided to the table.

"I'm surprised to see you here. I take it you enjoyed the food?" Sanji asked.

"I'm here, aren't I?" the man in black replied crossly, taking a seat.

Sanji opened his mouth to say something else, but he realized small talk wouldn't get him far with such an ornery customer.

Still, as much as the swordsman Isshin was grating on his every nerve, he felt an intrigue that made him want to find out more. He took care of all of his needs, and didn't give his waitress the opportunity to visit the table even once.

Isshin ordered sake to drink and chose his meal based on Sanji's recommendation, hardly giving the menu more than a thumb-through. At the end of the meal, when Sanji asked the man in black if he enjoyed the food, he simply nodded in affirmation. Then he paid his check and left, uneventfully and without so much as a word.

For the rest of the night, Sanji felt utterly restless inside. Yet no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn't think of a single reason for his inexplicable uneasiness.

* * *

_A/N: A piece of obscure One Piece trivia that I thought I'd mention... The name of the dojo owned by Koshiro, Kuina's father, is the Isshin dojo._


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

_**Trois Bleu**_

_**A few days later **_

The next three nights in a row, the swordsman Isshin returned to the Trois Bleu.

The first night, Sanji was stunned to see him. Once again, he personally attended to almost all of the needs of the man clad in black—although he did let the waitress Kitty refill his sake glass a few times, as he greeted some of his customers at other tables.

The second night, Sanji did not see him come in. The chef had been in the back, dealing with a faulty piece of equipment in the kitchen that was causing delays. When he was finally through, he nearly started in surprise when he saw Isshin seated at one of the tables, unobtrusively sipping sake, menu still in front of him.

Sanji reached out toward Kitty, who was rushing by with a tray of dirty dishes, brushing her lightly on the shoulder. "How long as he been here, Kitty-san?" he asked quietly.

"About twenty minutes," the waitress called behind her, as she set down the heavy tray. "I keep checking on him, but he hadn't wanted to order yet."

"Hmm, is that so. I'll take care of him, then," he murmured, nodding.

"I figured you would, boss," she smiled.

First stopping to fill a sake flask, Sanji approached Isshin and set the flask in front of him. "I heard you've been here for awhile, so I thought you'd be ready for more," Sanji smiled, a phony, friendly proprietor's smile, as his tired eyes studied the man in black, searching for the faintest hint of a reaction through the mask and feathers.

"Ah, you were right," Isshin replied.

"Did you get a chance to hear about our special today?"

He nodded again, the tacky plumage of the headdress bobbing slightly. Sanji's jaw tightened; that thing looked so ridiculous. This man must have had terrible taste, to choose to wear such an awful accessory.

"And what do you think?" Sanji asked.

"Hnn, what do you say about it?"

"Ah, I would say to get it while you can. It's an East Blue fish that isn't too abundant here, so we only have it on the menu when a fisherman has a lucky haul," Sanji explained. "It's one of my favorites, though—I used to eat it all the time when I was younger. If you liked what you had last night, I'm sure you'll enjoy it."

With an abrupt nod, Isshin handed the menu back to Sanji. "Fine. That, then."

As he put in the order, Sanji frowned, the deep lines around his mouth becoming more pronounced. His brusque attitude, despite how he was obviously waiting for Sanji's recommendation before he ordered, grated on him. Really, most of his interactions with him had been fairly similar; each and every word that came out of the swordsman Isshin's mouth irritated him beyond words.

But even if the man in black was a little curt, he wasn't the worst customer he had ever had. In fact, most customers who acted similar to him barely fazed Sanji. Yet this man could inexplicably push him over the edge with the slightest remark. Even as the chef considered how he would have regarded Isshin if he had been a little less terse, he still felt certain that the other man would have annoyed him. He couldn't fathom the other reason, other than it perhaps being because he had taken _his_ dream...

Sanji bit down on his lip. This train of thought was unwelcome, and it left him overcome with frustration over his foolishness. He didn't even want to consider _that _being the case, but if it somehow was, his ill-will wasn't really toward the swordsman Isshin at all. Rather, it was toward the shitty marimo himself, for dying in such a terrible way. For never getting the chance to become the world's strongest swordsman himself.

Still, he couldn't help but feel animosity toward the man in black.

And even more, he felt like there was _something else_ that troubled him, but whenever he felt like he may have been able to put it to words, the reason eluded him again.

On the third night—all animosity and other intangible feelings aside—Sanji found himself expectantly watching the door, as though he was waiting for Isshin to come.

However, by the time the mysterious man inevitably arrived, Sanji was preoccupied with a large party celebrating some kind of event. He popped over to Isshin's table for a moment, but other than that, all of his attention was devoted to the sizable group.

He was familiar with a few people at the table, as they were semi-regular customers, and he knew they were the kind of customers who demanded much of his time. In particular, there was a middle-aged woman and her daughter, who was in her late teens, both of whom always seemed quite enthralled by his suave nature.

This happened with many of his regular customers, actually. He supposed it was a product of his youth, spent relentlessly flirting and doting on pretty women. Although time—among other things—had stripped away his obsession, he was still an expert at treating women like they were queens, and as such, he had a lot of women who would seek him out, whenever they felt they wanted to be doted on.

How he would have longed for women demanding his attention this way when he was younger; but now that he no longer coveted their affections, he found himself with an endless supply.

As the swordsman Isshin stood up to leave, Sanji was conversing with another one of the females at the table, someone he had not met before, but who nevertheless seemed quite eager to speak to him. His his eyes followed Isshin all the way to the door as he continued his vapid conversation with her. Strangely enough, as the man in black let the door close behind him, Sanji could have sworn he turned around to glance back.

The rest of the night passed by uneventfully. As Sanji stepped outside and locked up the restaurant, he took in a deep breath of salty air, surprised by how nice the weather was. The usually humid and chilled night air was surprising crisp and energizing.

With a pang, he wished he had not made plans for the evening. He would have preferred to enjoy a glass of wine on his patio, alone and uninterrupted, basking in the pleasant evening.

But it was a promise he had made several weeks ago, so he had to go through with it. An acquaintance on the island, who had temporarily closed his bar for remodeling, had insisted Sanji come by as soon as it reopened. Tonight was the night, and there was really no good explanation to get out of it, so the cook resolved he would pop in for one quick drink—nothing more—and head home afterward. He would have an easy excuse to not stay long; after all, the next day, Trois Bleu would be open for both lunch and dinner, so it would be convincing when he insisted he needed his rest to prepare for his early start the next day.

As he leisurely strolled along the road, Sanji shoved his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes, taking in another lengthy breath. It was a bit strange; being an artificial island, Fisherman 9 had no beach, but for some reason, strolling along the roadside near the edge of the salty sea, Sanji almost felt like he could have been walking on a sandy shoreline. He opened his eyes, staring up at the starry night sky, losing to the traces of nostalgia lapping at his brain and the warm, mesmerizing sea breeze.

* * *

_**A godawful island somewhere in the New World**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

When Sanji finally came to, he felt disoriented. He realized after a moment that he was being carried, and with each stride, the back of his head throbbed painfully. For a moment, he could barely open his eyes, seeing stars from the shooting pain. The smell of blood, saltwater and steel filled his nose. And if the third scent couldn't help him identify who was carrying him, the broadness of the back was enough... and the slight familiarity of the body he had his legs wrapped around. This was a body he had certainly wrapped his legs around a couple of times before, albeit with considerably less clothes on.

He opened his eyes, and even in the darkness of the night, he saw that the nest of hair that kept brushing his face was green. Sanji was being carried on the swordsman's back, with his arms flung around the green-haired man's shoulders. Zoro tightly held onto his legs, which were wrapped around his torso, leaning forward slightly so the blonde man wouldn't topple backward.

Sanji started to open his mouth to say something, but all he could manage was a groan. The swordsman stopped, tilting his head back to look at him. "You okay?"

"Not the word I'd use," Sanji muttered. "Put me down, I can walk."

"You don't have to," Zoro replied, not making a move to release him.

The swordsman's tone was a bit peculiar, but Sanji had heard it a few times before. It was likely he was a little worried; Sanji couldn't remember exactly what had happened, but it didn't take a master detective to figure out someone had clobbered the hell out of the back of his head and he had fallen unconscious. But even if Zoro had a shred of concern, that was probably all the shitty swordsman could muster to say, now that the danger had passed. Hell, he might have felt a little bit guilty for not preventing the injury; it was hard to tell with Zoro, especially since the idiot never actually voiced those kinds of thoughts. Or more likely, he wasn't capable of voicing those kinds of thoughts.

"I'll feel better with my feet on the ground," Sanji said finally. Without another word, Zoro released his grip and let the cook slide off of his back.

But as soon as he was standing, a wave of wooziness hit him. Reflexively, Zoro reached out and slipped an arm under his shoulders, supporting him in case he lost his footing.

"Want to sit?"

Sanji nodded, a bit stupidly, as the movement sent a fresh burst of pain crashing through his skull. He grunted as the swordsman helped ease him to the ground.

Once seated in the sand, he started to pull away, but Zoro instead kept his arm tightly wrapped around him so he couldn't move. "Just stay, idiot," he said forcefully. After a moment, he added, a bit more hesitantly, "You can lean against me."

A moment later, the strong arm slid away, but Sanji didn't pull back. This, too, was a manifestation of whatever impediment plagued the shitty swordsman; this was all Zoro could do, and reacting the wrong way wouldn't be beneficial for either of them. Sighing heavily, Sanji let his head droop on the other man's shoulder. It felt so damn heavy to hold it up on his own, after all.

"Where are we going, anyway?" Sanji asked finally.

"Back to the Sunny."

"Hnn, is it anywhere around here?" The cook scanned the horizon, not seeing anything along the coastline that even remotely resembled the port where the ship was docked.

He shrugged. "I figured I'd get to it if I stayed by the water."

Sanji's brow twitched, but he was too exhausted to even yell at the swordsman. "So you got lost and decided to take me with you, huh, shitty marimo."

"Tch, now that I think about it, I probably should have left you there, cook," he replied sourly.

Sanji furrowed his brow, but once again, he assessed that he didn't have the energy to argue with him.

When Zoro unexpectedly turned his head and pressed his lips on Sanji's, he also felt like he didn't have the energy to fight back.

The soft kiss invoked thoughts of care and tenderness; but that didn't seem to make sense. Sanji quickly concluded that it was probably just his head injury not allowing him to see straight. Although, it was not like it was fair for that normally feral mouth to kiss him so gently. Of course it was going to give him an incorrect impression.

They slowly rolled their tongues together, lips airily brushing together. It lacked the aching, predatory desire that they usually seemed to share when they came together—that fire igniting in his core that could only be snuffed in one way. But still, it was pleasant, and it make Sanji feel like he could ignore the throbbing in his head, if only slightly.

If the startlingly soft lips and the wanting tongue had not felt so familiar against his mouth, Sanji may have doubted it was actually Zoro at all. But it was him—and Sanji realized that even a stubborn swordsman's mouth could be unbearably affectionate and warm.

* * *

_**The roadways of Fisherman 9**_

_**Present time**_

Sanji stopped abruptly, a bit startled at the memory. He had barely remembered it before now—likely due to the concussion he had had at the time—so he was surprised that it had inexplicably come to mind.

As he contemplated it, he realized it might have been the only time something like that happened when he and Zoro weren't getting ready to go at it. Probably, since it was shocking enough that he could remember it had happened even one time.

He started walking forward again, trying first to recall, and then fighting with himself over how pointless it was to recollect such a memory, when he just barely stopped himself from walking into someone.

"Ah, sorry about that, I didn't see you," he said apologetically, raising a hand in apology. He really had not seen whoever it was—the bystander was clad entirely in black, after all, and this stretch of road was pitch-dark, so it was easy to miss him.

And then he realized that this man wearing all black was quite familiar.

"Ah, what a surprise to see you here, Isshin...-san," he said carefully.

Another one of those long stares from Isshin followed; they made him endlessly uncomfortable, likely because he couldn't see even a glimpse of the expression on his face.

"Don't call me a -san... _Sanji_," the other man replied finally. The way he pronounced the cook's name, in his low voice, sounded almost a little bit jeering.

The hair on the back of Sanji's neck raised, and he found himself biting down on his lip to keep a sharp retort from tumbling out of his mouth. There was no reason for him to show this much animosity, after all, even if the other man rubbed him the wrong way a bit.

"Ah, so you knew my name," Sanji replied carefully, smiling politely, his jaw slightly clenched.

Isshin shrugged. "Did you just close?"

"A short while ago, yeah," Sanji replied. "Ah, I think I owe you an apology for earlier. I was a little busy with that one table."

"I could tell," Isshin replied with a nod. "I'm sure all those women were much a lot more ideal to wait on than anybody else there, anyway, hah?" Unexpectedly, the man grinned, his teeth startlingly white in the moonlight.

Sanji was thrown off-guard; his breath hitched in his throat as he studied the smile, frantically searching his mind for the reason why it affected him so much. But then, he forced himself to brush it aside. It was probably because it was the first time he'd seen the other man smile, that was all. It was a lousy explanation, but it was all he could come up with.

Even if, oddly enough, he suddenly found himself returning the grin. And although his smile was a little reserved, it was also a bit more honest than it usually was these days; not the false smile he usually forced himself to put on. "Tch, a customer like you is probably best," Sanji confessed. He was a bit startled by his own honesty, but then, it was a harmless comment, so it wasn't like it mattered anyway.

"There's no need to be a liar about it," Isshin rumbled, one corner of his mouth upturning a bit wryly.

"It's not a lie," Sanji replied a bit defensively; why was that, anyway? It wasn't like he had any reason to defend himself. Yet here he found himself, trying to explain. "It's flattering, when a beautiful woman is being so demanding on your time. But you know, a customer who only asks for food and drink, and nothing more, is a little easier to deal with."

"Ah, but it they're like me, they need their drink refilled a lot."

Sanji raised an eyebrow; his brain hadn't quite caught up with his eyes and ears, so he couldn't properly take in what was happening right now. All he could tell for certain was that the seemingly stoic, broody man had another side, and for some baffling reason, he was showing it to him right now.

And for some even more mystifying reason, Sanji impulsively wanted to know more.

"Yeah, that table seemed a lot less interested in the food than they were in you," Isshin commented smugly. "Seems like a lot of trouble."

"Yeah, it can be, I suppose," Sanji admitted, shrugging. If his younger self had heard him make such a comment about flirting with women, he would have lost it. But things had changed so much... He looked downward, his eyes momentarily lost in shadow.

"I'll let you be on your way," Isshin said, interrupting his thoughts. "I was heading this way to get a drink somewhere, anyway."

Sanji spun around. He meant to only tell the man in black that he was going in the opposite direction of the town if he kept heading that way. But instead, a careless invitation tumbled out of his mouth.

"If it's a drink you're looking for, I was just heading to a bar myself. Somebody I know just reopened his place, and I told him I'd swing by," he said, nodding in the direction of the shopping district. "It's a good place for high-quality spirits, but there will be sake, too."

Isshin regarded him for a drawn-out moment.

It lasted long enough for Sanji to realize just how strange it was, for him to suddenly blurt out something like that. He inwardly scolded himself; what the hell was he thinking? "Ah, not to put you on the spot or anything," the chef said quickly. "If you want, feel free to come. But if not, there are a lot of places to go around here..."

"It'll do," Isshin replied finally. "It's not like I had anywhere in particular in mind."

"Alright. Well, this way then," Sanji said, urging the other man to follow him, wondering why he suddenly felt so uneasy.

As they continued their small talk and headed to the bar, Sanji continued mentally berating himself. But, even though he didn't particularly want to get to know the other man better, he couldn't shake the shitty feeling of _curiosity_ he had toward him. That stupid intrigue, that had compelled him to keep waiting on him at his restaurant, and watching the door for the moment he would arrive.

Maybe he would stay for more than one drink, after all... Because he inexplicably wanted to know more.

Maybe he would _need_ more to drink... Because even in the meaningless, borderline-contentious conversation they were having, the similarities began to rack themselves up, one after another. If only the similarities could have ended with the whole "strongest swordsman" thing.

* * *

_**Porthau Bar**_

_**A short while later**_

"Oh ho, Sanji! You came!" a husky older man bellowed the second Sanji stepped foot into the bar. Quickly slamming a glass down in front of a patron sitting at the bar, he briskly walked over to Sanji, clapping him on the shoulder in a hearty greeting. Sanji smiled faintly, nodding in response.

"Well? What do you think?" the grinning bartender asked, sweeping an arm through the air. He was a burly man with a thick, short beard and small eyes with a mirthful glimmer.

"It looks good in here, Porthau," Sanji replied, sweeping his gaze back and forth, eying the new renovations. What had once been a shabby, old bar had been given a second life, with new fixtures and flooring, and a fresh coat of paint. There were only a few patrons, however.

"I know, looks pretty empty, right?" the man broke in, laughing heartily. "But don't worry, it's just because almost no one knows we reopened yet. I gotta whip my guys back into shape, now that they've had a whole three weeks off."

"Oi, you probably need it more than them," Sanji replied.

"Hmm, did you bring someone with you?" the bartender suddenly burst out, his small eyes widening as he took in Isshin. "Don't just stand in the doorway, come in!"

Isshin wordlessly took a step forward, stepping in next to Sanji.

Sanji turned toward Isshin. "This is Porthau. He's the owner, if you couldn't guess. And Porthau, this is—"

"Oh, I know who he is!" Porthau exclaimed. "Well, it seems you've brought a celebrity with you today."

"A celebrity? I don't think I've heard that one before," Isshin replied. Sanji glanced over at him, and noticed he was smiling wryly.

"Really? Well, you should get used to is—Isshin-sama, is it?"

"Oi, I don't need all that," Isshin replied.

"Well, Isshin-san, then. Come have a seat and tell me what you're drinking," the bartender replied cheerfully. "I've got some of the finest wines and spirits, if you're interested. And if it's not your thing, I've got your usual bar-swill too."

Sanji raised an eyebrow. "You know, you shouldn't say such a thing about your own bar."

"I'll stop saying it when people stop ordering it after I do," the bartender replied with enthusiasm.

* * *

_**Porthau Bar **_

_**Three hours later**_

Sanji hadn't had this much to drink in a long while. Well, at least not outside of the comfort of his own home. As Porthau kept on pouring, he realized that he was surely getting past the point of being able to walk steadily.

"Alright, old man, that's enough," Sanji said firmly, putting a hand over his glass as Porthau tried to refill it for the umpteenth time. "Tell me what I owe you, and I need to be getting out of here."

"Psh, rubbish, like I'm going to charge the man taking such good care of my son," the bartender laughed.

Isshin, who had been downing the contents of his own drink, set down the glass with a loud clack and turned his head toward the grizzly man. "Your son?"

"Ah, didn't he tell you? My boy Mouston is one of his cooks."

Sanji nodded. "You probably haven't seen him, though. He's usually back in the kitchen, after all."

"That so," Isshin rumbled.

Brushing a few strands of blonde and white hair out of his face, Sanji turned back to the bartender, his expression hardening. "But never mind that, tell me what I owe you so I can get out of here."

Porthau grinned, turning toward Isshin. "See, I think my boy is drawn to him because they're both stubborn as hell and don't listen to a word anybody else tells 'em."

"That must've been hard for you," the man in black commented, grinning slightly.

"You have no idea," Porthau nodded, leaning forward to refill his glass. Unlike Sanji, he didn't refuse it.

"It was a pretty big shock when he told me he wanted to be a cook instead of a barkeep like his old man, though." The large man turned back toward Sanji. "You should be ashamed of yourself, stealing away a man's oldest son like that. Who's going to take over all this when I'm old and feeble, eh?" He asked, gesturing toward the bar.

"You have two more sons and a daughter, I'm sure between the three of them, you'll figure it out," Sanji replied, glaring at him. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a couple of bills and stuck them on the table. Then he rose to his feet—and immediately had to reach out to grasp the counter top to steady himself.

"Damn, you made me drink too much," he muttered under his breath. When he glanced up, he noticed that Isshin seemed to be staring at him.

"Hey now, get that off of my bar, your money's no good here," Porthau said insistently.

"Then take it for his drinks," Sanji replied, gesturing toward Isshin.

"Oi, there's no need to that," Isshin said, reaching into his pocket for money of his own. He tossed it in with what Sanji had left, and also rose to his feet, finishing his full glass in a single gulp. "Thanks for the drinks. I'll come back sometime," he said with a nod.

Porthau tried to argue with them to take back some of their money, and Sanji was pretty sure he retorted, but his head was a little too fuzzy for him to really pay attention at this point. All he knew was that he was far more drunk than he should have allowed himself to get. He was also vaguely aware of Isshin walking beside him, although he didn't think they were having much of a conversation.

He actually didn't quite remember how he made it back to his house. But for some reason, he kept thinking about a familiar, strong arm from long ago that had braced him upright on similar nights such as this.

* * *

_**A bar somewhere in the New World**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

"Why the hell did you want to get a drink right now, anyway?" Sanji asked with annoyance, taking an irritated drag from his cigarette. He sat next to Zoro at the bar of a relatively empty bar just a short walk from the hotel they had just left. Since the hotel had offered a dubious hourly rate, they had opted to only stay a few hours and then head back to the Sunny for the night.

But for some reason, the marimo had pulled him into the bar almost immediately after they left, and although Sanji had objected quite noisily, he ultimately gave into the swordsman's whim.

"I thought it'd make more sense if we came back late after drinking," Zoro replied nonchalantly.

"Oi, since when are you worried about things like that?" Sanji replied crossly.

"What do you mean?"

"Tch, you just don't usually think anything through that much," the cook commented. "I bet you just wanted a drink."

"Ah, that too."

"Shitty marimo." He took another peevish drag, to emphasize his annoyance.

"Oi, it isn't just me. You're drinking too," Zoro pointed out, gesturing toward him with his glass.

"What else am I supposed to do? This is a bar. I'm not just going to sit here and stare at you while you drink."

"Then let's drink," Zoro said, raising his glass cheerfully, despite the stoic expression on his face.

A bit taken aback, Sanji hesitantly clinked his glass against the swordsman's.

* * *

_**The same bar somewhere in the New World**_

_**A couple of hours later**_

Sanji should have been more annoyed that Zoro had somehow convinced him to keep drinking, until he lost count of just how much he had consumed.

He was a little bit drunk, but what was more, he was also incredibly tired. The fatigue from his earlier activities with the swordsman—which were more than grueling—co-mingled with the alcohol in his bloodstream was making him start to nod off. Before he knew it, his head had started to droop forward, until he was resting his head on one hand, elbow on the table, with a burning cigarette still clutched between two fingers of his free hand.

In fact, that was what jarred him awake when he was about to pass out—the feeling of the cigarette being very carefully plucked from his hand. A moment later, he felt a strong, heavy hand rest on top of his head.

"It's last call, ero-cook," a surprisingly comforting voice whispered in his ear. "Ready to head back to the Sunny?"

Reluctantly, he raised his head, groggily looking up at the swordsman, and nodding affirmatively. "Ah, can't believe I'm dozing off here."

"Probably because you're drunk," Zoro smirked.

Glowering at him, Sanji rose to his feet, preparing to make a retort—but then he realized the swordsman was exactly right. He knew he was feeling it pretty badly, but as soon as he was on his feet, the room felt like it was spinning. "Shit," he muttered darkly, bracing himself against the table-top.

He didn't really remember the details, like how they managed to return to the ship with Zoro leading the way, but he was vaguely aware of a strong arm firmly bracing him for most of the walk back.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

_**Trois Bleu**_

_**Early afternoon, the next day**_

"Ah, you really did come," Sanji called out, waving to Isshin in greeting. While they had been drinking together at Porthau's bar the night before, he recalled telling the other man that he should come try the lunch menu, since Trois Bleu only served it two days a week.

As he briefly caught a glimpse of Isshin outside, just before he stepped through the restaurant's double-doors, Sanji realized that the world's current strongest swordsman appeared far more menacing in the high noon sun. His black garb, in such stark contrast to the brightness of the outdoors, together with the mask hiding all but his rigid mouth, made him seem like a nightmare exposed to the light of day. Almost, except maybe for that silly feathered headdress.

Isshin shrugged indifferently. "You told me to try it," he said simply, stepping inside.

As the chef sat him down at a table in the back corner—the same table he had sat him at every night for the last four nights—he expected him to follow a similar ordering pattern. Each day, he had eaten whatever Sanji recommended. Even the night before, when he only greeted him briefly, he noted the man in black had ordered exactly what he told him to. Since it was a lunch menu, the daytime food was a lot less elegant than the dinner entrees, but certainly not any less scrumptious.

"I think you might enjoy the special we have today," the cook told him, as soon as he was seated.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"There's an excellent bakery here on the island..." Sanji started, slipping into a spiel about the fresh-baked bread that was made especially for his restaurant, and how it was absolutely mouth-watering and exquisite. As he spoke, Kitty happened to step out of the kitchen with an armful of plates boasting the enormous sandwiches, which were loaded with a decadently fried piece of fish and a variety of trimmings, and Sanji beckoned at them with enthusiasm.

When he was through, he looked at Isshin expectantly, waiting for him to nod his head and agree to order it. He was surprised when he was met with silence.

"I'll have this," Isshin finally told him, pointing to another item on the lunch menu that involved a simple grilled piece of fish served with a risotto.

"An excellent choice," he smiled carefully, trying to mask any semblance of the surprise he was feeling. "We'll have it out shortly."

Sanji was a bit startled in the difference between Isshin's demeanor today, compared to the night before. Had he always been so abrupt? Come to think of it, he did have the impression that he was mostly unfriendly, but they had chatted for hours at the bar, so that couldn't be the case. Sanji tried to speak to him a few more times, but he was unable to get much of a conversation started.

Frustrated, he realized that it didn't matter. He had no idea why he was actively trying to speak to the man, anyway. After all, he had made up his mind that he found Isshin's presence distressing and difficult to take in. If all he needed was service, then there was no reason he should make any further attempts to speak to him.

No matter how hard the cook searched, there was no sensible reason that he felt inexplicably compelled to keep talking to him. Maybe there was something wrong with him, which compelled him to try to communicate with such difficult people.

* * *

_**A tavern near the harbor of an island in the New World**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

It was the first time Usopp had tried to match Zoro and Nami drink-for-drink, and Sanji was pretty sure it was going to be the last.

The more inebriated he became, the most insistently the long-nosed man tried to convince Sanji to join the obviously slanted competition.

They all sat at a square table, with Nami to Sanji's left, Usopp to his right, and the insufferable marimo directly across from him, moodily taking swigs in almost perfect sync with Nami's beautiful—but equally large—sips. And poor Usopp was trying his best to keep up, but he was clearly a lost cause.

"It's a drinking game," Usopp insisted, hooking a muscular arm around Sanji's shoulders. "It's no fun if you don't play."

"I think you've misunderstood the 'game' part of it," Sanji replied, smirking as he took a long drag off of his cigarette.

"What do you mean?" Usopp asked, inexplicably laughing, as though the cook had said something hilarious. He removed his arm from Sanji's shoulders and slumped back in his seat.

"It's not a game if you're just trying to out-drink us," Nami said, laughing and leaning forward to clink her glass with Usopp's, to which the long-nosed man eagerly complied. "You need to have rules set up, so the loser drinks more."

"Ehh, why aren't we doing that, then?!" Usopp exclaimed. He turned to the cook again. "Oi, Sanji! You'll join if it's a game, right? Come on, you have to!"

"You don't even know what the game is," Sanji replied.

"Tch, it's useless, Usopp. He won't try if he knows he's going to lose," Zoro taunted, his eye fixed on the cook as he spoke,

"Oi, what the hell is that supposed to mean, moss-headed bastard?" Sanji shouted, angrily clamping his teeth down on the end of his cigarette.

"You're bad at games," the swordsman explained simply.

"Where are you even getting this from?" Sanji asked angrily. He turned to Usopp. "When did he see me play a game?"

"You played chess with Robin a few times," Nami pointed out.

Sanji's face darkened. "That's different—I can't beat the amazing Robin-chwan at chess!" he exclaimed. Then he faced forward to glare at Zoro. "Besides, didn't you lose to Robin-chan at chess, as well?"

"No."

"What?" Sanji yelled shrilly. "How the hell could a moron like you beat Robin-chan—"

"I never played her," Zoro interrupted. Sanji's face turned an angry shade of red as Zoro shrugged nonchalantly. "I don't know how to play chess."

"Bastard..." Sanji said through gritted teeth. He jumped to his feet, preparing to kick the swordsman from across the table. The grinning marimo was already standing as well, hand clutched on the scabbard of one of his swords.

"Robin beat Zoro at othello," Usopp burst out suddenly.

"See, Robin-chan did beat you," Sanji shouted, raising a leg.

"Oi oi, come on, you guys, we're going to play a drinking game!" Usopp said with alarm, jumping to his feet as well and placing a hand on each of their shoulders—or at least, trying to. He managed to grab Zoro, but then he stumbled forward and nearly fell on the table. Zoro roughly pushed him backward until he ungracefully landed back in his chair.

"Well, Nami? What's the game?" Usopp asked eagerly.

A mischievous grin crossed the navigator's face, as she pensively twirled a red curl around her finger before brushing it behind her bare shoulder. "I think I know just the game. Sanji-kun, could you do me a favor?"

"Of course, Nami-swaaaan," he replied eagerly. His heart skipped a beat as she leaned in to whisper something in his ear—a request to ask the bartender if he had four cups with dice.

An hour later, Usopp was laying down face down on the table, presumably unconscious. As it turned out, the biggest liar on the ship was incomprehensibly bad at liar's dice.

And Sanji wasn't faring much better. His face was flushed red; the cook was far more drunk than he would have liked to be.

Really, he hadn't intended to play at all, but Nami had sort of sucked him into it. As the group of four left the tavern—with the passed-out Usopp slung over Zoro's shoulders—Sanji found himself having a very, very hard time managing the walk back to the Sunny.

Nami seemed alright, but then, she always tended to be fine, no matter how much she drank. Sanji never could figure out her secret, but he was enthralled by the way the slender woman could put away alcohol.

"I'm going to bed!" Nami exclaimed, as soon as they set foot on the ship. "Make sure you give him some water when he wakes up, okay?" she said, winking at Sanji as she nodded her head in Usopp's direction.

"Of course, Nami-swan," he called out, his legs not quite moving the way he wanted them to as he tried to dance around her.

As Sanji headed to the kitchen and Zoro (still carrying Usopp) started to walk away, Sanji unthinkingly called after him, "Come back up here when you're done."

The swordsman didn't make any gesture indicating that he had heard him.

Sanji's brow twitched slightly in annoyance. Well, he had only intended on making them something to eat; and why the hell should he feel compelled to stay in the swordsman's company, anyway. He had only been thinking that if he went to sleep after drinking that much booze without something in his stomach to absorb it, he would wake up with one hell of a hangover—although granted, he was probably going to anyway.

Sanji busily loomed over a pile of ingredients, unable to stop himself from grinning slightly in embarrassment as he kept fumbling over simple tasks. He had originally planned on making something a bit more elaborate, but he had quickly assessed that it likely wasn't practicable.

He turned on a burner and placed a pan on it. And stumbled in surprise when he realized Zoro was right next to him.

The drunk cook would have probably lost his balance but for the swordsman's strong hand, which reached out and grabbed his shoulder firmly until his feet were securely planted on the ground again.

Dropping his arm back to his side, he looked up at Sanji skeptically. "You really think you should be cooking right now, ero-cook?"

"I'm just making sausages," he replied, his good mood unbreakable even by the aggravating swordsman. "I got them in town earlier, along with some fresh baked bread, so I thought we could eat some before he went to sleep."

Zoro shrugged. "Yeah, I guess that sounds okay."

"We should bring some for Usopp, as well," Sanji continued. "He'll be in bad shape tomorrow."

"He may not be able to eat," Zoro smirked.

"Well, he definitely won't be able to keep much down," the cook replied, grinning widely. A bit too widely; he definitely needed to eat something to calm the giddiness in his head.

As he sliced the soft, fresh bread, Zoro took a cautious step closer to him. "You got that?" he asked gruffly, as if trying to mask some kind of concern.

Or maybe it was just his imagination; it seemed unlikely he would be, after all.

"What kind of question is that?" he scoffed indignantly.

"I mean, if it's cutting, I can do," Zoro offered begrudgingly.

"Tch, I could've drank ten times as much as I did tonight and still handle a kitchen knife better than you, shitty marimo," he replied with a glare.

And sure enough, the sausages were exquisitely cooked, and the bread was perfectly cut and served decadently warm. Even if the path he walked wasn't straight, he securely held the plates as they headed to the table, and set them down with his accustomed flourish—even if it was just for the swordsman this time.

And when he sat again, his head spun.

"Ugh, why did I play that shitty game," he muttered as he started to take a long swig of water.

"I told you, you're bad at games," Zoro replied.

"You have no basis for that!" he said, voice raised.

Zoro shrugged, lip almost twitching into a smile, to Sanji's chagrin. "I've seen you lose most of the games you play, though."

"The hell? I can't even remember playing any games, except when he fought that shitty noro-noro bastard," he said, vaguely recalling the Davy Back Fight that they had all participated in, right after they had left Skypiea.

"That doesn't count."

"Why the hell not?" Sanji asked, furrowing his brow.

"Because I helped you," he replied smugly.

"Bastard, I helped _you_," he emphasized.

"Sounds like something someone who loses would say," he said with a shrug, sticking a large bite of sausage in his mouth and chewing it obnoxiously, cheeks bulging.

"I'm too fucking drunk to deal with this shitty marimo," the cook muttered to himself in annoyance. Suddenly he noticed a hand reaching across the table toward the third plate. His head snapped up in surprise.

"Oi, that's the plate I'm bringing to Usopp," he scolded. "Are you Luffy now? Don't take anything from it."

"He's not going to care about anything but the bread," Zoro replied, snatching one of the plump sausages.

Sanji sighed, pausing to take another long sip of water. "So, you like it?" he asked, nodding at the sausages.

"It's okay," he replied, his mouth now full again.

He clenched his jaw. "If you want something else, I'll make it."

"Nah, this is fine."

Although he was a little bit annoyed, he still felt inordinately cheerful—too cheerful to allow himself to get as pissed off at Zoro as he usually would. In fact, he found himself engaging in a conversation with the swordsman that left him full of laughter.

As they headed back to the men's quarters, Zoro holding a jug of water and Sanji holding a covered plate of food for Usopp, he found himself overtaken by laughter once again over an idle comment the marimo had made. He merrily slid an arm around Zoro's shoulders, a gesture they all frequently practiced with one another when they were having a good time.

However, realizing he had not done that to Zoro many times before was actually a little bit sobering. He stopped laughing for a moment, glancing over at Zoro, who was grinning widely as he chuckled.

The green-haired man seemed unfazed; in fact, Sanji wasn't entirely sure why he himself wasn't. Probably because they didn't often get along this well, he realized. He held his arm there for a few seconds longer, and then casually pulled it away.

Suddenly, he felt a wave of irritability pass over himself, as he wondered again why the hell he had felt compelled to ask Zoro to join him in the kitchen.

By the time Sanji had roused Usopp enough to get him to drink some water and eat a piece of bread, Zoro appeared to be passed out. Yet as Sanji walked past him to get to his own bed, he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he was being watched.

* * *

_**Sanji's home**_

_**Two days later**_

For two days a week the Trois Bleu was open for lunch and dinner, and for some perplexing reason, the swordsman Isshin came for both meals on both of those days. In all his years, Sanji couldn't recall a customer ever coming so many times a row. He was a little uneasy about it—but it's not like there was anything to be done.

Isshin had remained mostly standoffish toward him, although during dinner the night before, they had started a brief conversation that was more reminiscent to the way they had chatted at Porthau's Bar. Granted, it was a little bit adversative in nature, but it seemed like he and Isshin had a lot that they didn't entirely agree on; or maybe the other man just had a bit of an antagonistic nature. _Must be a swordsman trait_, Sanji thought sourly.

But today, the restaurant was closed, so the man clad in black would have to go elsewhere. Sanji tried his hardest to push him out of his mind, as he spent his day mulling around at home.

After he ate his supper, alone, standing at the high counter-top of his kitchen, he took a glass of wine and a book outside to his patio, his reading glasses perched on his nose. This was the repetitive, drab way he usually passed his evenings. It was dreary, but it was familiar; it was much simpler to get through the days when there was no change. After all, there was no way of knowing whether a change would bring happiness or remorse, so he figured it was best to merely maintain the status quo.

As the sun was just starting to set, he noticed the outline of an unmistakeable figure strolling near his house, and he felt his stomach twist in a knot. For a moment, he wondered with alarm if the man in black had been seeking him out; maybe he was being stalked.

But as Sanji stared at him, he realized Isshin had not so much as glanced in the direction of his house.

And then the cook found himself seized by a strange and uncontrollable impulse. Rising to his feet, Sanji set his book and his glasses down next to his wine glass and rose to his feet, leaning over the edge of the patio. "Oiiii!" he called out loudly, waving his hand in the air.

Isshin stopped abruptly and turned, regarding him for an impractically long moment. Then, a bit slowly at first, he started to walk in the direction of Sanji's house.

"Isshin," he nodded in greeting, when the other man was in earshot.

"Evening, Sanji," he nodded, grinning slightly—that mouth, that was the only indication of any expression the man had. Once again, Sanji felt a little uncomfortable by the way he pronounced his name; it made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

"What are you doing around here?"

"Ah, just making my way back from town," he said, indicating in the direction he had been walking from.

"Headed back from town?" Sanji asked, tilting his head to the side slightly. The direction the man had pointed in was definitely not the direction of the town, but maybe he had just gotten turned around on his walk back.

The man in black nodded again, now walking toward him. "Yeah, I had to get something for dinner."

"That so. Find anything good?"

Isshin grinned wryly as he approached the patio. "Well, I found food, if that's what you mean."

Sanji couldn't help but let the corner of his mouth tug slightly upward. "Oh? Not to your liking? That's a shame if you had something bad. There's a lot of excellent food around here."

The other man's mouth turned grave as he stepped onto the stairs that led up to the patio. Sanji was a little taken aback, actually, but he wasn't sure why. It's not that he necessarily didn't want him to come—he just didn't expect that he would.

"It was food," he repeated simply. "Had to eat somewhere, after all." His head turned slightly, and Sanji assumed that he was taking in the layout of the patio.

Sanji couldn't help but glance as well. His patio was relatively sparse—only two chairs and a small table, where his glass of wine and book were currently sitting. Really, it was kind of pointless to even have the second chair, but maybe it could come in handy tonight.

"You want a drink?"

Instantly, he wondered why the hell he said it; but by the time the words had escaped his lips, it was too late to do anything.

Once again, there was a long, reluctant pause in response to his invitation to do something with him, just like a few nights before. But then he grinned, and said, "Sure, I'll take whatever you've got."

"I've got sake."

"Sounds good."

Sanji disappeared inside for a moment, and when he came back out, Isshin was seated in the other chair. Once he had handed Isshin the drink, Sanji took a seat and glanced over at Isshin curiously. "So, where _did_ you wind up eating, anyway?"

"A yakisoba stand on the roadside—just on the edge of the town."

Sanji raised a hand to his mouth, stroking his goatee lightly. "Ah, I know the place. They aren't that bad, actually." Then his brow furrowed slightly. "Hmm, but if you have a palate for finer foods, you would be better with some of the restaurants in town."

"A palate for finer foods... Tch, I wouldn't say that."

"You keep coming to Trois Bleu, though... Our dishes definitely fall into that category."

The man in black shrugged. "I can eat anything, it's just I got used to eating a certain style of food when I was younger, so I kind of can't help but eat it when it's there."

Sanji raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Were you from a wealthy family, or something like that?"

Isshin scoffed, trying to hold back a grin. "Not at all. Besides, I just said I was younger. I wasn't a kid or anything."

"Not a kid and not from a wealthy family... Well, that means you must have lived with a cook, or something like that." Suddenly, Sanji smiled teasingly. "Ah, was it a girlfriend?"

The man in black turned toward him. "Tch, nothing like that," he muttered, frowning deeply.

Sanji held back a chuckle. But it was obvious that whatever the reason was, Isshin didn't really want to talk about it. "I won't pry anymore. It was just a curious comment, that's all."

"There's no story behind it, really. I ate a lot of meals like that for a long time. And then I didn't have them anymore... for a long time," he said gruffly. The gravelly intonation of his voice, which sounded partially etched in by age, seemed to reverberate through the air.

"You know, when I read the papers about you, I sort of assumed you were a young kid, starting to make a name for himself," Sanji said, his gaze fixed on the horizon in the distance. "But I can tell that's not true. You sure as hell are talking like an old man right now." Suddenly the cook realized just how casually he was speaking—surprised at himself, he abruptly sat up a bit more rigidly, glancing over at Isshin apprehensively.

But Isshin just laughed, a low, rumbling, and slightly _haunting_ laugh. Even though he didn't sound displeased, it definitely sent a chill down Sanji's spine. "Hah, well I'll take that as an insult from one old man to another, then, _Sanji_."

* * *

_**Crow's Nest**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

Just like the first time, it mostly only happened at shitty hotels, although every once in awhile, when one of them just couldn't hold back that much longer, they'd steal away to a part of the ship where they were likely to be undisturbed—deep closets in the cover of night sort of thing.

The very last time they did it had been in the Crow's Nest, though. Zoro had been on watch that night, and when Sanji had suddenly appeared with a lustful look in his eyes, the swordsman sure as hell hadn't turned him away.

After they had satiated their craving, they laid together for a few moments, staring up at the ceiling in silence. Once Sanji felt his breathing return to normal, he wordlessly sat up, reaching for the clothes that were haphazardly thrown around him.

Strong fingers suddenly wrapped around his wrist, squeezing tightly. "You don't have to go right away," Zoro murmured lowly. Sanji turned around to look at him expressionlessly; Zoro was still laying back, one arm over his face, shielding his eyes.

"If I fall asleep, who knows how late it'll be before I go," he replied soberly, pulling his arm free as he attended to lighting a cigarette before he continued finding his scattered clothes.

"Tch, no one'll notice if you don't go down there. You're usually the first person up anyway, so when everyone wakes up, they'll just assume you're already in the kitchen."

"Are you saying you want me to sleep up here with you, marimo? It's one thing when we're stuck together in a hotel, but..." he trailed off, his brow furrowing slightly.

"Don't read into it too much, ero-cook," Zoro replied roughly. "I don't care what you do."

Sanji took a long drag off of his cigarette, pensively staring out of one of the windows at the inky ocean spread out before him. He wasn't really bothered that Zoro may not want him to go right away, actually. He didn't particularly want to go, either, but he felt like it was expected that they'd part after they did it.

After all, if the casual sex that had been occurring with increasing frequency started turning into intimate late-night conversations and sleepily spooning together, waking up in each others arms, that would mean this was something different entirely. He was pretty sure neither of them wanted that. And, he reminded himself, it was different when they got a room together—they didn't have a choice but to spend the night together after that. They paid for a whole night, usually; it'd be a waste to leave before the night was up.

Sanji's dangerous train of thought quickly derailed as a cough racked through his body. When he was through, he resumed picking up his clothes and getting dressed.

"I'm leaving, then," he told Zoro, cigarette loosely dangling from his lips. Now fully dressed, he opened the trapdoor and started to descend the ladder to the deck below. He paused for a moment, though, when he realized that Zoro had propped his body upright slightly, and a tumultuous gaze was fixed on him.

Sanji raised a curled eyebrow, momentarily locked by the intensity of the stare.

"What?" he finally snapped.

The swordsman averted his gaze, but he didn't speak, and the cook had nothing left to say, so he finally shut the trapdoor and left the swordsman alone to the night-watch.

He didn't sleep well that night. Even though he should have been able to rest easily after doing it so many times, for some reason, the seemingly meaningless conversation started to churn in his mind over and over, and he wondered if some of his conclusions may have been slightly hasty.

But in the end, it never mattered. The next day, the two men argued over Chopper's warning for Sanji to stop smoking. And two days later, Zoro was gone forever.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

_**Sanji's patio**_

_**One week later**_

Just like the swordsman Isshin had been appearing at Trois Bleu every day, he began to routinely show up at Sanji's house at night. Most days, he brought a bottle of something, and offered to share—although Sanji typically stuck to his own wine. He never pestered Sanji to come inside of the house. They simply sat outside in the patio chairs, facing the ocean beyond as they sipped their drinks, leisurely chatting or occasionally sitting in an increasingly tense silence.

Maybe it was only tense to Sanji though; he had begun to feel an increasingly strange and unsettling emotion around Isshin. He couldn't say he particularly liked the man in black—and admittedly, the faint similarities between Isshin and the long-dead swordsman were agonizing. But although he considered it countless times, he couldn't really turn the other man away. Not seriously, anyway. He started to give him some hell about showing up unannounced, but it didn't seem to discourage Isshin in the slightest.

"I can see I'm causing a lot of trouble interrupting the nothing you're doing," Isshin said nonchalantly, leaning back in his chair, one arm tucked behind his head. The moonlight illuminated the small portion of his face not concealed by fabric and feathers, revealing an obnoxious grin.

"Tch, that's a hell of a way to talk, when you keep showing up at a person's house out of the blue."

The man in black shrugged offhandedly, untucking the arm behind his head to reach for his sake cup. "I was worried you'd be lonely, sitting around this big house by yourself."

"Instead of worrying about nonsense like that, you should be worried about how annoyed I am," Sanji shot back, a prickling feeling of aggravation starting to rise within him. Really, these were were the worst moments, when this troublesome man started to stir up his rusted emotions, which he was accustomed to keeping locked away so well.

"It's surprising you have a house like this, actually," the man in black commented.

"Hah? What's that supposed to mean?" Sanji scowled.

"I don't know. It seems a little big, considering you don't have much in there."

Sanji turned his head and peered inside the glass door behind him, contemplating what the other man had meant. He was right; from the patio, it was easy to see the living room and kitchen, and it was indeed quite sparsely furnished—a couch, a couple of chairs, and a small breakfast table near the kitchen.

"It's simple," Sanji replied finally, the lines in his forehead deepening.

"Actually, it doesn't really look like any of the houses around here, either." Isshin tilted his head upward thoughtfully. "Your restaurant doesn't either. I bet somebody who wasn't from around here built it."

Sanji's mouth opened, but he was not quite sure how he wanted to respond. Strange; he never really thought about it, these days, but his visitor was spot on. He closed his eyes in quiet remembrance.

* * *

_**An old shack on Fisherman 9 ("Old" Trois Bleu)**_

_**Sixteen years ago**_

Whether he was simply moved, or feeling indescribable anguish and pain, Franky was a man who cried openly and without restraint. These were reactions Sanji empathized with less and less he grew older; in fact, he couldn't even remember the last time he had been moved to tears.

Certainly not since he had opened his restaurant; not even since he had set out for Fisherman 9, one of the artificial island in All Blue.

As the blue-haired man bawled so openly in front of him, however, he knew he had to muster some semblance of words of consolement. Even if he had no idea what in the world could possibly be comforting anymore.

"I can't imagine how hard it's been..." Sanji started. But he immediately gave up; as soon as he had heard his own voice, it was already clear to him that his words would offer anything but solace. It was futile; sympathy and comfort weren't things he was capable of now.

Franky wiped his nose for a moment, pushing his sunglasses upward to perch on top of his head so he could brush the tears from his eyes.

Sanji studied him with a crinkled brow. He looked more machine than ever these days; his already enormous frame had yet again been expanded and modified, and other than the blatantly artificial blue hair and the flesh-like substance covering his face and increasingly enormous hands, nothing else on him resembled a human being.

And yet, he still cried just like a man. Sanji imagined the tear ducts and the snot were all artificial; but Franky probably wanted to make sure he always kept that shred of humanity, so he couldn't forget the man he once was. Even if, from how Sanji saw it, the cyborg had lost his reason to care about anything anymore, at that moment when Robin had been taken from the world.

"Ah, that's just the thing, Sanji—you do know," Franky said, his voice strained. "That's why I can talk to you."

Sanji's brow darkened as a misunderstanding began to bud in his mind; memories of his shameless flirting with the black-haired woman scattered across the surface of his consciousness. "Do you mean because..." he started, but he couldn't even form the words.

"Because you went through the same thing," Franky said, sniffing loudly.

The cook adamantly shook his head from side to side in disagreement. Though of course the cook had grieved, the man he had already turned into didn't permit him to grieve like the rest of of his nakama... And certainly, his grief was not even remotely resemblant of the anguish of the shipwright, who had loved her passionately.

"There's a huge misunderstanding here," Sanji started to explain; it was important Franky understood there was nothing more than Sanji's shameless flirting between him and Robin. Even if Sanji had wanted more at some point, a very long time ago, it never ran any deeper.

"The two of us never... I mean, the way things were between us..." Words inarticulately tumbled out of the cook's mouth, but each time he started to explain himself, it seemed to come out too bluntly... This was a topic that had to be approached with subtlety. And even more, he felt he needed to avoid saying her name at all costs; speaking it aloud just may have been too painful for the cyborg to hear right now.

An enormous hand pressed down on the cook's shoulder. "It's okay, you don't need to hide it from me. I knew about it all along... She and I talked about it, in fact," he said, half-wailing.

"You did what?" Sanji asked, his jaw slightly agape. In the past, his reaction to such a misconception would have surely been more impassioned, but now, he only felt a sort of dull shock. He wasn't even sure what she and Franky had had to talk about. Near the end, the cook didn't even flirt with her very often; it had just become too difficult to force the actions that had once been so natural to him. "Why?" he asked finally.

"What, why'd we talk about it? It was just what we did. She and I talked about everything!" A fresh wave of tears came on. "I miss her so much. I thought time would make it easier... It's been three years, though, and it's still so empty."

A tightness overtook the cook's chest that almost rendered him breathless, but whatever the reason for it, he forced it beneath the surface. It had nothing to do with this—and he couldn't let himself even venture to imagine what the trigger was. After all, why should he be familiar with time being unable to heal such a fatal laceration to the soul?

After a long pause, Sanji rubbed his temple. "But for you to talk about it with her—" he started, pausing again. Wasn't it strange for the cyborg to talk to Robin about other men who were in love with her? His frown deepened incrementally.

"Robin noticed what was going on, and I think she wanted to be supportive," Franky continued with a noisy sniffle.

"Supportive of me being in love with her?" he asked incredulously, cringing as soon as the words left his mouth.

"Hah?" Franky asked in confusion, his tears momentarily subsiding as he stared at Sanji blankly. "...'Her'?"

"Yes, her—Robin-chan!" Sanji exclaimed.

The still-sniffing cyborg suddenly burst out laughing. "Sorry, you surprised me there, Sanji. It's been awhile since I heard you make a joke."

"I didn't make a joke," Sanji said, furrowing his brow in confusion.

"You weren't in love with Robin, though."

"How could I _not_ be in love with Robin-chan?" he protested.

"Well, I guess in the way you're in love with all the ladies, but that's different," Franky responded, still chuckling slightly. Then his expression grew more serious. "It's just the two of us here now, though, so there's no reason to hide it. We're both going through something similar."

And then, Sanji realized what the blue-haired man had been implying all along. Momentarily unable to breathe, he jammed his hands deep within his pockets, trying to conceal his trembling hands.

As much as the cook had wished it hadn't been apparent to some of the crew, it was inevitable that they had an inkling that something had transpired between him and the swordsman. And surely, a woman as observant as Robin probably picked up on it better than all the rest. Still, to have it acknowledged so bluntly...

The chef could not handle this conversation. Silently, he prayed Franky would go no further. He couldn't bear to hear the words. Couldn't stand to even argue the subject that should've been so long dead... Long dead, just like the idiot marimo. Just like Sanji felt, deep down inside.

"But enough of all that," Franky said, abruptly changing the topic. With an enormous arm, he gestured toward the small, eight-table sized restaurant they were sitting in. "We need to do something about this place."

"Like repairs?" Sanji asked, once he felt confident enough to speak.

"I had something a little more super in mind," Franky grinned, sliding the sunglasses on the top of his head back down over his eyes.

Sanji raised an eyebrow. "Like what?"

"I'm going to build you a better restaurant," Franky said, grinning widely.

* * *

_**Sanji's patio**_

_**Present time**_

Sanji mulled over Isshin's comment a moment longer. Well, there was no real reason he couldn't tell him something vague about it. It's not like this man would be concerned with the private details of his past, anyway.

"An old comrade of mine sort of insisted on building the restaurant," he said finally. "And he has a tendency of over-doing things, so once he finished, he built this house, too."

"That's a hell of a thing," Isshin said, his low voice rumbling in astonishment. "What'd you do to make him want to do that?"

Sanji stared down into his wine glass, swirling its contents contemplatively.

"I think I gave misery company," Sanji replied with finality.

The cook could feel the other man staring at him, but he didn't bother to turn to meet his gaze. It was pointless anyway; it's not like he could see his reaction beyond black fabric and feathers, he thought with a prickle of irritation.

* * *

_**Sanji's patio**_

_**Several days later**_

He was here yet again. Once again, they sat together, this time with Isshin holding a glass of whiskey, and Sanji languidly sipping from a flute filled with a deep amber port. Like all the times before, their chairs faced the ocean beyond, as they watched the dark, shimmering waves crash beneath the bleak night sky. Sanji noticed that even his discomfort of being around Isshin was starting to become static in the background again, and this was turning into the dreary tedium of each day.

Sanji rubbed his eyes tiredly; he wished he had been able to sleep more lately. But trying to sleep inevitably led to recalling memories of the past; and likewise, sleep led to similar dreams. If someone put a devil's fruit in front of him that would make him forget painful memories, he would swallow it in a heartbeat.

"So, is this what you always wanted?" Isshin asked, suddenly tearing him away from his thoughts.

"Hah?" Sanji asked, sitting up a little straighter, trying to remember what they had been talking about.

"Your restaurant and all that."

Sanji narrowed his eyes, carefully choosing his words at he focused on the dark waters in front of them. "We're talking about dreams now, aren't we," he muttered quietly.

Isshin nodded. "Ah, I guess I am."

Sanji narrowed his eyes, his lined brow furrowing deeply as he stared out at the water. "When I was young, my dream was... to find All Blue."

"That so?" Isshin commented, reaching into the inside of his long black cloak for something. Sanji glanced at him for a moment, and noticed he was holding out two cigars.

"Want one?"

Sanji shook his head negatively. "No thanks."

"You sure? They're good ones—I usually wouldn't usually share."

"Even despite your _generosity,_" Sanji started, putting a mocking emphasis on the word, "I don't smoke."

"Ah, suit yourself," Isshin said peculiarly, grinning as he stuck one of the thick cigars between his teeth. "So, All Blue was your dream, huh?"

Sanji nodded slightly, turning his attention back to the ocean. "A lot of people told me it didn't exist. Some of them laughed in my face for it." The corner of his mouth twitched faintly, like he was trying to smile, but couldn't quite muster the expression. "But here it is, right before my eyes."

"Well, I guess that makes you lucky, right?" Isshin said, taking a long puff from his cigar. "Not everyone gets to realize a dream."

"Yeah," Sanji said, covering his mouth with his fingertips when he spoke. What the other man had said was so true, it almost ached. He took a heavy sip from the glass next to him, glancing at his strange companion again. Although he couldn't see where the other man was looking, he could feel the gaze on him.

"I guess you've been happy here, then."

"Happy..." Sanji muttered, his expression turning grave as he knitted his brow. He swirled the contents of his glass for a moment, studying it thoughtfully. "I guess I can say I'm fulfilled, since I was able to do the thing I set out to do."

Something that might have been a frown flickered across Isshin's face for the briefest moment, but it quickly vanished. "Yeah, and you've got all this now too," he said, nodding toward the house, and then gesturing somewhere off in the distance—Sanji presumed he meant to indicate where the restaurant was, although he was pointing in the wrong direction. But he didn't think too much of it.

"You're right," Sanji nodded carefully. "I got what I wanted. And I've been dreamless for a long, long time now," he added wryly.

A long pause followed.

"Speaking of dreams," the cook started to continue, but he immediately stopped. _Speaking of dreams, I used to know someone who wanted yours? _Is that really something that could be said? It was a ridiculous thing that he never discussed with anyone—to bring it up to a man who was still mostly a stranger, even if the stranger happened to be the present world's-strongest-swordsman, was absurd.

* * *

_**Sanji's bedroom**_

_**Early the next morning**_

Sanji awakened dripping in sweat, gasping noisily as he struggled to suck in deep breaths of air.

He frantically pulled himself to his feet and rushed to the bathroom, falling to his knees when he reached the toilet. But as much as he wanted to empty the contents of his stomach and all of the horrible, anxious feelings welling up inside of him, he did not get sick. Eventually, his heart rate started to slow, and he was breathing normally. As his mind became less befuddled, and he recalled the night before, he was able to surmise that this had nothing to do with the meager amount he had drank the night before.

Unsteadily, he rose to his feet and stumbled to the sink, where he began to splash cold water on his face. This awful, twisting feeling in his abdomen wasn't illness due to alcohol and he wasn't sick.

It was just a dream.

A fucking memory from when he was half the age he was now.

Sanji looked up at the mirror and stared at the beads of water dripping off of his haggard face. Pushing back the hair falling over his right eye, he stared at the pale, mostly faded scar running along his cheekbone.

His stomach churned violently, and in his head, he silently pleaded to no one in particular for the rush of memories to just _stop _already.

* * *

_**The hotel room of a beautiful, sexy goddess**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

Sanji screamed out "beautiful" and "gorgeous" to refer to her, because he couldn't quite recall her name. He was pretty sure it started with a "K," but calling her the wrong thing would be far more unforgivable than only calling her affectionate nicknames.

Forgetting a detail about an attractive woman was definitely unlike him, but he had already been long past drunk when he first approached her (or when she had first approached him—he couldn't really recall), and once they were seated next to each other, her foot casually brushing against his ankle over and over, she kept feeding him drinks. Even though he knew he was way over the limit he liked to pass, he couldn't tell her no. Not with that stunning body. Not with those ruby red lips... those voluptuous breasts.

And by the time they were in her hotel room across the street from the bar, and she was naked and top of him, scratching fingernails down his chest, it was definitely way too late to ask for her name again.

Really, by the time she pinned him down on the bed, practically tearing off his clothes, he wasn't so concerned about it, anyway. She lead him through a kaleidoscope of pleasurable sensations he had never quite experienced before. He suspected she did this kind of thing pretty often, but he wasn't complaining. How could he complain, when he could barely see straight from the mix of booze in his bloodstream and electrifying bursts of bliss igniting all over his body.

She somehow managed to keep him at his peak way too long, too. Each time he thought he was close, she changed her rhythm, slowing just enough to make him hold back a little bit longer. When he finally came, he was fairly certain he saw stars as the climax rocked his body.

Too drunk and numb from pleasure to do much else, when they were through, he pulled her luscious, naked body against him and promptly fell asleep. He vaguely hoped she would be up to do it again in a little while, so he could enjoy her when he was a bit more sober, but if she threw him out, he couldn't really blame her.

When Sanji awakened, he felt a thrilling rush soar through him as he realized she was straddling him over the blankets, clad in her lacy underwear and not much else. It was a good sign; she must have wanted to do it again. He was a bit panicked when he realized his limbs were tied up, but he was a little excited to think the vixen in front of him was into something so kinky... He'd never actually been tied up before. Well, not during sex, anyway.

His head was still swimming a little bit—he wondered if he was still drunk—but it didn't matter all that much. He could already feel the surge of blood rushing to his excited groin, so as long as that was working right, it didn't matter how inebriated he still was.

But the excitement abruptly drained from his body when she pulled out a dagger and dangled it dangerously above his chest—specifically, just above his heart. Reflexively, he tried to buck her off, but a rope was tied over his waist in addition to the binds on his arms and legs, so the gesture was futile.

"Oh, so you're awake now? Well, it doesn't make much of a difference," she said, her sugary-sweet voice now tinged with a coldness that sent a shudder down Sanji's spine.

"You were as easy to lure as the rumors said, Black-Leg Sanji," she smiled wickedly, running her finger down the blade of the dagger. "It's shameful just how little I had to do to get you here."

"Who the hell are you?" He felt a drop of sweat bead down the side of his face.

She shrugged. "I'm just a business-woman. I have no gripe against you, but someone paid me a handsome amount to take down one of the Mugiwara pirates, and I thought you'd be the easiest target for me."

"Someone paid you? Who was it?"

"Who indeed?" she smiled disarmingly, pointing the blade of the dagger back toward his chest. "When you're an assassin, the name of who pays you isn't nearly as important as the name of who he's paying you to kill. I will say, he must have quite a dislike for your crew, because he's paying quite a bit to get you all eliminated." She leaned forward slightly, purposely letting her body grind against Sanji's groin. "Maybe I'll take on one or two more of you, since this was so easy."

He tried to kick, to yank at the tethers, desperately attempting to do anything to free himself, but it was futile. Smiling ruthlessly, she raised her hand upward, grasping the dagger with two hands. "Bye-bye, Black-Leg Sanji," she called out as she started to swing downward.

What happened next unfolded so quickly, Sanji could barely follow it. The door appeared to burst inward in an explosion of splintered wood, and it was only when Sanji caught a glimpse of green hair that he realized it was caused by a very familiar set of katana.

Zoro's face was contorted in fury as he lunged as the woman, who just barely raised the dagger in time to block the green-haired man's swords.

"I see I'm not too late," Zoro rumbled, forcing her to stumble backward as he leaned his weight into the katana.

"How did you know?" the woman asked, clearly shocked by the swordsman's appearance.

"Somebody at the bar thought you had a familiar face," Zoro explained, his tone menacingly flat. "When he remembered you were an assassin, he let us know somebody might need to come save this curly-browed dumbass."

In a panic, Sanji futilely struggled against the ropes, exerting all of his strength. For all of his effort, he only managed to marginally loosen the binds around one leg.

"Your crew is here, then?" She asked; there was an unmistakeable tinge of alarm in her voice.

"No, it's just me. I told them I'd take care of it," Zoro replied.

And then there was no more conversation, as Sanji heard the rapid clang of metal-meeting-metal, over and over again.

Realizing he was making no progress, he paused for a moment to lift his head, so he could see what was going on. The woman, still clad in only her underthings, was undoubtedly a skilled fighter, but it was obvious she was used to evading attacks and relying on polished techniques to end fights quickly. She was already perspiring and breathing heavily.

Zoro was the worst possible match for her. Not only did he have a nearly inhuman amount of stamina, but he had the kind of raw power that would crush someone used to fighting that way. The only way to fight Zoro's monstrous strength was with strength, and the assassin clearly didn't have it.

But even though Sanji knew the swordsman could have taken her at any moment, he didn't cut her. And then suddenly, she seemed to vaporize into nothingness, and a moment later she was behind Zoro, her arm wrapped around his throat.

Sanji clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together painfully; she had a devil's fruit ability.

And then she vanished again, and before Sanji could tell where she had gone, he felt something prick him in the chest. Sanji's eyes widened; she was above him, the dagger right above his heart, but he couldn't move or do anything to deflect it.

If Zoro had moved half a second later, the blade would have penetrated beyond his skin and through his chest cavity, straight into his heart. And the chef would have been utterly powerless to prevent it.

Even as she and Zoro resumed their fight, Sanji was staring at them, slack-jawed, his head spinning as he contemplated just how close it had really been for him. Then, he tried to focus on the two battling in front of him, and he quickly realized his original assessment of the woman had grossly underestimated her.

"I could tell you were just toying with me before," she called out, repeatedly disappearing and reappearing, and obviously trying to take advantage of a potential blind spot on Zoro's left side. However, she quickly realized she would gain no advantage by attacking him there. "I thought maybe I could take Black-Leg out and then get out of here, but it looks like you won't let me get at him, ne?"

"What do you think," Zoro growled.

She tried another strategy, and Sanji watched in awe as the swordsman actually took several blows. They were small—only some cuts and scratches—but he was stunned nonetheless. Still, the swordsman was not attacking her seriously.

"You're still only going to keep blocking me? How disappointing," she sneered.

She made a move to attack Sanji, but just as Zoro lunged toward her, closing the distance in a flash, she vanished in a blur and reappeared behind the swordsman. Zoro's eye widened in surprise as she buried her blade into the muscles around his shoulder blade. When Zoro turned to strike her, she was back by Sanji again, and this time, her blade was grazing Sanji's throat.

As the cold steel just barely cut into his skin, the cook inhaled sharply, momentarily halting his struggle to break himself free. He felt slightly befuddled from the alcohol still swimming in his bloodstream, and he was filled with a terror that he never would have admitted to aloud... But Sanji's terror of his possible imminent death was insignificant compared to how he felt as he observed the fury emanating from Zoro's face.

And then, an even greater terror passed over him, sending a shudder through the length of his body, as he watched the eye of the swordsman flash savagely. It reminded him of a wild beast, just as it moved to strike for the kill.

"No!" Sanji cried out fervidly; he instinctively knew what that look meant.

The demon-like man threw himself at the assassin, and her eyes widened in surprise as she found herself completely and utterly overwhelmed. Before, the swordsman had let her land hits, but now, she couldn't even stand her ground.

Her face became more and more strained as she started to take blows, cuts and gashes that she wasn't able to evade appearing on her bare skin—wounds that a logia-type was no longer accustomed to feeling.

Still, Zoro didn't slow down or take it easy on her, no matter how panicked she began to look, and no matter how much Sanji screamed at him. Zoro was past the point of hearing his voice; he wore the same gruesome face he always wore when he faced a deadly enemy.

Finally, the woman fell to her knees, futilely raising her dagger to block as Zoro raised his katana—Sanji recoiled in horror, recognizing the killing blow.

"Zoro!" he bellowed, screaming at the top of his lungs, eyes clenched shut by the effort of it. "_Stop!_"

When he opened them again, the swordsman was glaring at him murderously.

"Why the hell are you telling me to stop?" he asked, and the bubbling fury underneath his voice was unnerving to Sanji.

"You've already defeated her!" Sanji cried out. "There's no point in going any further."

Zoro turned to look at the woman again. She had collapsed on her knees, tears streaming down her face, utterly shaking from terror.

"See?" Sanj said. "She's harmless now."

"Tch," Zoro said, his brow furrowing angrily. But after a moment, instead of striking her, he removed the katana from his mouth, and sheathed it along with one other sword. The third sword still clutched in his right hand, he started to approach Sanji. "Fine, I'm going to untie you, then."

Sanji leaned back on the bed, realizing he was out of breath. His mind still felt a little fuzzy. God, he had drank way too much. As soon as the last bind had been cut, Zoro took a step back, sheathing his sword. The cook tentatively sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed, planting bare feet on the cool wooden floor.

Then suddenly, the woman laughed, and any trace of the cute, coquettish laugh that had dazzled Sanji earlier had utterly vanished, replaced with something cruel and sinister. "I'm harmless now? As if those weak cuts are enough to take me down, Pirate Hunter Zoro," she called out coldly.

It happened in a flash, and yet in that instance, Sanji experienced a dizzying number of sensations.

Her heated body was suddenly pressed against him. Sanji could feel her bare skin and lace brushing against his naked body, and smell her sweet perfume. And even more vividly, he felt the sensation of the blade of the dagger against his throat again once again.

"I'm going to take out both of you right now, and then I'm going to go kill the rest of your worthless crew," she avowed, the pitch of her voice high and frenzied.

But instead of feeling cold steel slice through his windpipe, he instead heard the deafening clang of blades clashing right by his ear. He felt a cut, not on his throat, but instead grazing his cheek; Zoro had deflected her blade incrementally, just enough to make it harmlessly slice the length of his cheekbone instead.

Then, in a flash of green hair and fury, Zoro whizzed past him, and he heard the clatter of something metallic hit the floor. When he turned to look just behind him, he saw the assassin had a look of surprise on her face, as she looked first down at her own body, and then met Zoro's gaze.

Sanji's eyes drifted downward; her dagger laid abandoned on the floor, and the blade of Zoro's sword had pierced through her abdomen.

"Zoro!" Sanji cried out, oblivious to his nakedness as he jumped up from the bed and grabbed the swordsman by the front of his shirt. "What the hell do you think you're doing, you bastard? You'll kill her!"

The swordsman's face contorted in an anger Sanji had seldom witnessed before. "Why shouldn't I? She tried to kill you. She's going to try to kill our crew."

"But she's a—"

"A woman?" Zoro replied venomously. "Is that the pitiful excuse you're about to give me?"

"Yes!" Sanji shouted, his fists tightening around the front of Zoro's shirt.

"What the hell kind of reason is that? This woman—she's _strong_. She's just as good a fighter as you or me," Zoro practically roared, shoving Sanji away as he yanked the katana between his teeth, the Wado Ichimonji, away from his mouth. "And she's going to keep coming after us."

"It isn't _right_!" Sanji yelled.

"Of course it isn't right," the swordsman replied darkly. "It's not _right_ to kill anyone. But I don't care if it's a man or a woman, or even a fucking fishman... Even if it's wrong, I'm willing to take on that sin. She's trying to kill our crew mates, cook." His eye narrowed slightly. "She's trying to kill us."

Maybe because Zoro's concentration seemed to be broken by his words, the woman suddenly vaporized again, appearing somewhere behind Sanji. She desperately lunged at the blonde man, aiming her reclaimed dagger toward his back.

In a nearly-instant motion, Zoro moved beside Sanji and swung his katana toward her, bellowing loudly.

"Don't you see, cook? She's still trying to kill you right now, too."

Sanji started to scream at him to stop again, but it was already too late. This time, the swordsman didn't hold back even slightly. The blade of the katana pierced through her and ripped upward, tearing through her chest, undoubtedly ripping its way through her heart as the blade finally exited at her left shoulder. She had tried to block it, but her dagger clattered to the ground in pieces, the blade cleanly cut in two.

As she crumpled to the ground, the cook rushed toward her and collapsed on his knees. He grabbed her fallen body, pulling her toward him, but he could already tell she was dead. Her flawless skin was stained red with her lifeblood, and her vivacious eyes were blank and listless.

Incensed, he jumped to his feet and lunged toward the swordsman, still all but oblivious to his nudity and the bleeding rope burns on his limbs and the cuts on his chest, cheek and throat, grabbing the front of the other man's shirt with bloodied hands. "You fucking bastard," he croaked. Instead of surging anger, for some reason, he felt almost deflated, like his legs might buckle right underneath him.

Despite his overwhelming display of passion a few moments before, Zoro was now the portrait of calm, as he collectedly re-sheathed his swords. Grabbing Sanji by the wrists, he yanked Sanji's trembling hands off of him, and shoved his naked body in the direction of the bathroom. "Wash yourself off," he said commandingly.

"Why the hell would I listen to anything you say to me," Sanji shouted, wrenching himself away from Zoro's grasp, glaring at him.

Other than the deep crease in his brow, Zoro remained completely expressionless. He walked around the room, calmly collecting pieces of Sanji's clothes that had been carelessly thrown aside by the now-dead woman who had so ravenously undressed him, just a short while ago.

As Sanji dazedly watched Zoro pick up article after article of clothing, nonchalantly stepping over her corpse, he began to feel violently ill. Abruptly, he turned around and rushed into the lavatory that Zoro had been trying to force him into a moment ago, and emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet.

Then everything reeked of booze and blood, and he stayed there for several minutes, feeling too sick to move.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, wondering how the hell it had gone so wrong. He was supposed to be taking a stroll through the garden of delights, rolling around in the sheets with a beautiful lady. But now, he was trapped in some kind of hellish nightmare. The woman he had been inside of just a short while ago was dead, he was stark naked on a freezing cold tile floor, clutching the porcelain bowl with blood-stained, white-knuckled hands, alone with only the shitty marimo.

The sound of two heavy items noisily clopping on the ground, followed by the rustle of fabric, jolted him back to reality. Zoro had deposited his shoes and other articles of clothing on the bathroom floor. Sanji clenched his jaw as a strong hand grabbed his shoulder, squeezing a bit too hard.

"Come on, clean yourself up. We need to go," he told Sanji, roughly yanking him upright.

Despite a violent wave of nausea, Sanji managed to keep from retching again. He was pretty sure there was nothing left to come up, anyway. Before he knew it, he had been led to the sink and Zoro was washing the blood off of his hands and wrists. His rough hands moved briskly, but they were surprisingly gentle.

Finally, when he had his wits about him again, he pulled his hands away and finished the job himself, taking a moment to lean over to wash his face. He was surprised at the amount of blood that came off in his hands. Glancing at his reflection in the mirror, he realized the cut on his cheek was deeper than he anticipated. When he finally turned off the water, the swordsman wordlessly handed him a towel.

As the blonde-haired man clumsily dressed himself, uncaring as to how disheveled he looked, he took a moment to glare up at the swordsman. He didn't understand how the other man was so collected.

"I still don't understand why," the blonde man muttered dejectedly, his voice slightly raw from the shouting and the vomiting.

"I already told you the reason," Zoro replied, his tone flat but somehow inflected with overwhelming emotion.

Sanji closed his eyes and forced himself to draw in several deep breaths. He needed a cigarette more than he could ever recall needing one in his life.

"We need to go," Zoro said impatiently.

"Ah," Sanji replied, slipping on the suit coat. Yet as he reached into his front pocket to retrieve a cigarette, he realized that the fabric still reeked of the assassin's sweet perfume. Rushing back to the toilet, he sharply landed on his knees as he buckled over, vomiting once more.


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER SIX**

_**Trois Bleu**_

_**That evening**_

"Oi, boss, are you doing okay?" Planchet asked.

Sanji started in surprise. He hadn't noticed the young man enter the storeroom, where he had been leaning against the wall, rubbing his temple.

"Ah, yeah, just a bit of a headache," Sanji told him, quickly straightening his posture. "Are you looking for something in here?"

"No, Kitty asked me to find you. She said there's a table asking about you."

"I'll be out in just a minute, then," Sanji responded.

As soon as Planchet left, letting the door to the storeroom click shut, the chef sank down to the ground and clutched his head between his knees. It wasn't a lie; his head indeed ached_,_ but there was something far more traumatic assaulting his senses.

It was ludicrous that he had let himself be affected by something so damn meaningless. It wasn't the first time he had been triggered by a random event or snippet of a conversation he had overheard, but usually it wouldn't grip him this badly. More typically, the feeling just became lost in the general numbness that consumed him, before it could noticeably impair him.

_Get it together, shitty old man,_ he thought to himself angrily. _The only thing you have to do is this job, so how fucking worthless are you if you can't even do it right._

He sucked in a ragged breath. It had only been a stray comment one shitty brat said to another shitty brat; two young men with an overgrown sense of entitlement having an utterly inane conversation. He'd seen them before—not that it mattered. He just happened to overhear a comment one of them made, which, to any other person, would have been purely meaningless.

"If you ever manage to beat me at a game of shogi, it will be cause for celebration, for sure. Why, I'll throw you a damn party myself," he stated arrogantly.

As the two young men laughed obnoxiously in disgusting unison, Sanji felt like the breath had been forcibly stamped out of his lungs.

Now, in the storeroom, the chef cursed under his breath, clutching strands of white-and-faded-blonde hair in his fingers. As if that dream that had woken him up wasn't bad enough, now here he was, thinking about _that_ time.

That conversation...

With all his willpower, he desperately tried to refrain from remembering those agonizing final words he had said that day; words that had echoed in his mind countless times.

* * *

_**Thousand Sunny**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

Zoro had just confronted the cook about Chopper's warning, as he plucked the freshly-lit cigarette from Sanji's grasp.

"Seriously, what the hell?" Sanji shouted at Zoro, once he had reclaimed it.

"I'm talking about when Chopper told you to stop smoking, dumbass."

That awful way the shitty marimo drew out the word _dumbass_... Sanji clenched his teeth in aggravation.

Still, Zoro continued. "What was that, half a year ago? And look at you now, coughing like a damned old man."

Glowering at him, Sanji continued to flagrantly suck on the cigarette, defiantly exhaling smoke toward the swordsman. "Yeah, what about it?"

"He noticed when he was in your body, didn't he?" Zoro asked. It had been awhile, but Zoro could have only been referring to one time; when Trafalgar Law used his _Shambles_ ability on them, back on Punk Hazard, and the young doctor's consciousness had temporarily been housed in Sanji's body. "Chopper told you he could tell there was something wrong with your lungs at that time—"

"Tch, he's a doctor—of course he's going to tell me to stop smoking," the cook interrupted snidely. "And how the hell do you know about that, anyway?"

"Had Chopper ever really told you that before, though?" Zoro said carefully, ignoring the question.

Sanji was silent; he hadn't, but he would never admit the obnoxious swordsman was right.

"I can tell something's wrong by listening to you."

"Tch, what would you know," Sanji muttered.

"That cough. And you... you've had a hard time catching your breath lately," he said hesitantly, his eye narrowing slightly.

"Why do you care, shitty marimo?"

Zoro averted his gaze. "It's one thing to get taken out in a battle, but over something like this..." he trailed off.

"What, are you talking about dying, marimo? Tch, that's taking it a bit far." Sanji shrugged nonchalantly, taking an exaggerated puff. "Besides, if I die from smoking, then you should be relieved I'm gone."

"Oi..." Zoro's brow furrowed deeply. "You really think, after everything, I'd be happy over that?"

Obstinately, he took another long, pensive drag.

"Sure, why not? I'd be happy." Smirking haughtily, Sanji turned his back to Zoro. "I'd be so happy, I'd throw a fucking party," he called over his shoulder as he exited the room.

* * *

_**Trois Bleu**_

_**Back in the present**_

Ah, damn, he had remembered it...

Sanji felt it in a heavy wave; the crippling remorse over that conversation, wrought by the guilt of the past all over again. That awful, soul-crushing regret that he had never, ever been able to forget, even as he tried to bury it deep beneath the darkest crevices of his mind.

Those had been his last words to Zoro before he died. The next day, they landed in that place, and he was taken out in that freakish accident, forever lost beneath innumerable tons of rubble.

Even now, when he thought about it, the pain of the wound felt as fresh as it did in the moment he had realized the shitty marimo was really gone forever.

But this was nothing new; he had been dealing with this for half a lifetime now. And the thing about life was that it had to go on. No matter how shitty it was.

After sucking in a few deep breaths, he rose to his feet again. Listlessly, he exited the storeroom, and headed toward the seating area of the Trois Bleu. As his tired, deadened eyes scanned the tables of customers, he knew immediately which ones had been asking for him. With one more deep breath, he turned the corners of his mouth into the best fake smile he could muster.

* * *

_**Sanji's patio**_

_**Later that night**_

Wine wasn't going to be enough tonight. And it was definitely going to be too troublesome to keep going inside to refill his glass. He was already prepared; a large, full bottle of bourbon and two glasses were set out on the small patio table. After all, that shitty man in black, Isshin, was sure to show up again tonight.

And a short while later, he did. By that point, the full bottle had been lowered by about three glasses, and Sanji was starting to feel a sort of pleasant numbness in his lips and fingertips. Without even asking if Isshin wanted any bourbon, he went ahead and filled the second glass. Sanji watched smugly as the man clad in black reached for it and took a long sip without a second thought. He hadn't seemed too picky about his booze, from what Sanji had watched him drink over these last couple of weeks.

"I would've thought you'd handle your liquor better," Isshin commented, once they had gotten through about two-thirds of the bottle, and Sanji had long since passed the line of being inebriated.

"I don't think I'm doing too bad," the cook replied, his speech slightly slower than usual, but not quite slurred.

"Tch, come on, we're even sharing this bottle. You were bad off when we left that man's bar that time, too."

"I used to be a pirate, but it doesn't mean I can fucking drink like one," Sanji replied sharply, sinking back in the chair and covering his eyes with one arm. His head was swimming, and it was a great feeling. When thoughts became too hard to form, it was impossible to think about difficult things.

Glancing from beneath his arm, he felt a prick of annoyance as he observed Isshin, who was leaning back in his chair, finishing the contents of his glass in a greedy gulp. He was really growing weary of this idiotic world's-strongest-swordsman, who kept inviting himself over, and showing up in his restaurant. He was sick of the ridiculous black headdress he wore, sick of his obnoxious grin, sick of the way that so many aspects of him made him think of _that_ man.

"I'm actually envious, it takes a hell of a lot for me to feel it," Isshin commented, dragging Sanji away from his hostile thoughts.

"That's a shame, considering the whole point of drinking is to _not_ feel it," Sanji muttered.

"Hah?" the man in black asked, turning toward him.

"Nevermind," Sanji sighed. It was too troublesome to explain.

"So, this is drinking to forget, is it," Isshin murmured after a moment of silence.

"Tch, since when does that ever work."

Isshin shrugged. "I don't have the answer to that." He reached over to grab the bourbon bottle, refilling first Sanji's glass and then his own. "But what are you trying to forget, is what I'm wondering."

Sanji gloomily took a sip of his newly topped-off drink.

"Ah, I got it," Isshin said suddenly, turning to look up at the house behind them. "You used to have a woman here with you?"

"Hah?!" Sanji exclaimed, nearly spilling his drink in surprise. He furrowed his brow deeply as he stared at Isshin. "Where the hell did that come from?"

He nodded solemnly, the feathers of his headdress swaying slightly at the motion. "It's coming together now. You had a wife, who just couldn't take it anymore, and took off with the children. That's why you live here all by yourself."

"Oi, I already told you the reason I have this house," Sanji protested, sitting upright and turning his legs in the other man's direction, facing him dead-on. "I've never had a wife, and I sure as hell don't have any kids."

"You sure about that?"

Sanji's eyebrow twitched wildly. "Yes. I'm fucking sure of it. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Isshin shrugged again. "I just mean, you never know, that's all."

"I do know," the cook said, rolling his eyes. "Huh, what about you, though?"

"What about me?"

"Do you have a family out there?" Sanji asked somberly.

"No, never had interest in any of it," Isshin replied seriously.

"Yeah? No kids you might not know about?"

"Nah," he said nonchalantly, clearly not as fazed by the question as Sanji had been.

"I see," Sanji said with a nod, the vein in his forehead pulsating in mild irritation at the direction of the conversation.

"Although, sometimes I..." Isshin started, his low voice rumbling pensively.

Sanji glanced over at him, noticing he was clenching his jaw slightly, his head tilted downward. "Sometimes you what?" he asked finally, after an inordinately long silence.

"Eh, nevermind," Isshin said, smiling. "I forget what I was going to say."

* * *

_**Crow's Nest**_

_**Twenty-two years ago**_

"Hah? What are you trying to say, shitty swordsman?" Sanji glared, jabbing his head into Zoro's face.

"I'm just saying you're more of a dumbass ero-cook than ever, stupid nosebleed," Zoro growled back, shoving his face forward until their foreheads touched.

"Who are you to talk, when all you've got rolling around in those stupid marimo brains is thoughts of training." He pushed forward a little with his forehead, not really bothered by the contact.

"Tch, I hope you pass out from blood loss, curly brow." Another shove with his face. This time, their noses touched.

They had only been reunited for a couple of weeks, but already, Sanji found himself being constantly sucked into Zoro's endless idiocy. He couldn't help it; whenever the swordsman opened his mouth, he wanted to vehemently oppose whatever he had just said.

With none of the other crew members around to intervene, they continued their quarrel for an inordinately long time. They might've continued for longer, but they had been sitting next to each other on the long bench wrapping around most of the Crow's Nest, sipping at two large mugs of mead, and they apparently had a mutual agreement that they would stay seated until their glasses were empty. Or maybe just until Sanji's temper finally snapped.

But before it came to that, the two men simmered down and peevishly backed away from each over. It was only after they separated that Sanji realized just how close they had been sitting during their quarrel. Sanji heaved a sigh as he sank bank on the bench, casually digging in the front of his pocket for a cigarette.

"Didn't you come up here to train, anyway? Why the hell are we drinking?"

Zoro shrugged. "Change of plans. It's... been awhile."

Sanji cast a sidelong glance at the swordsman, who was sitting a short distance away to his right. From this angle, he knew the other man couldn't quite see him. He studied the long scar covering his left eye, caused by a wound that appeared to have so deeply penetrated the skin on his face.

Zoro turned his head incrementally, just enough so he could faintly see Sanji in his periphery. "What are you staring at, shit-cook?"

"Why would I be staring at the likes of you, shitty marimo?" he muttered moodily, averting his gaze. He did wonder what the cause was; but whatever it may be, he knew Zoro would not talk about anything he wasn't ready to talk about. Really, even after being separated for two years, the somber swordsman was as terrible at ever at conversation.

So even though curiosity made the words dance dangerously close to the edge of his lips, he didn't ask the question. Instead, he inhaled the pungent smoke of his cigarette deeply, leaning his head back as he exhaled. They lapsed into a comfortable silence for awhile.

The silence was probably best, because the moment they started speaking again, yet another argument broke out. Their glasses now empty, this time, they had no excuse not to get rowdy or to prolong their exposure to each other. Rising to their feet, they resumed their somewhat ridiculous head-butts back and forth. He found himself grasping Zoro's shoulders sharply, and in turn, the marimo's hands gripped him by the wrists.

The cook shoved him forward. Zoro shoved back harder. Then Sanji shifted his weight lower, heaving his body forward heavily, hoping the difference in equilibrium would be enough to throw the other man off balance. And then, a moment too late, he noticed the swordsman's heel making hard contact with a carelessly abandoned barbel.

Zoro lost his balance, and Sanji, who had been leaning all of his weight against the green-haired man, expecting to be braced, tumbled forward as well. He tried to regain his footing at the last second, but Zoro still tightly grabbed his arms and he wound up collapsing on top of him.

His elbow hit the ground hard, and for a moment he winced as the pain reverberated up the not-so-funny part of his bone. After a moment, he became aware that he was laying on top of Zoro, his cheek pressed flush against the other man's face, which inexplicably seemed a few degrees warmer than it had when their foreheads had pressed together a short while before.

"Oi, you okay?" Zoro asked roughly.

"What the hell wouldn't I be?" Sanji muttered with irritation.

"Then why the hell are you just lying there?"

"I'm getting up, give me a damned minute, shitty marimo," he cursed. He tried his best to pull himself away with minimal contact with the swordsman's body—but it wasn't really possible, considering how completely he had fallen on top of him.

And then, his fucking body did something so horrible and unreasonable, the cook stupidly froze before he could remove himself from the swordsman... instead of getting the hell up so it would go unnoticed.

It had to just be bad timing; maybe if he had fallen on top of Nami or Robin's sexy, curvaceous bodies, he would have thought differently, but there was no reason why the hard, sinewy body of the marimo should do anything for him. Even if it had been awhile for him, that sure as hell didn't matter. He wasn't _that_ broken from not seeing a real woman for two years. No matter what, this situation should have made him endlessly limp, so that he couldn't get it to rise even if his life depended on it.

Still, no matter how logically his brain assembled thoughts like these, the hard, unwanted visitor in his pants defiantly bulged outward—unmistakeably digging into Zoro's thigh. All the cook could manage to do was continue staring forward, utterly frozen in horror.

A flicker of an emotion sparked across Zoro's face that made Sanji inwardly cringe. He couldn't tell if the swordsman was in shock or just embarrassed for him, but it didn't matter; he was humiliated and petrified, so he probably couldn't have interpreted it right no matter what that look meant.

Then the other man's expression simplified, instantly becoming a blank slate, and he stared up at Sanji. When he finally spoke—which was probably only about a second later, but to Sanji, it felt like an eternity—there was a slight tug of the corner of his mouth to one side. "Is it too hard to get up, ero-cook?"

The breath snagged in his throat, and he madly scrambled to peel himself off of Zoro, all the while far too fucking conscious of just how _obvious_ it must have felt. He was fucking incensed at the swordsman's double entendre, and fucking furious at himself for what had just happened. There was no lying that it was something in his pocket, or a bulky zipper, or some other equally ridiculous excuse. It was conspicuous and distinct—and there was no way he could lie to another _guy_ about it. He would know.

He clearly already knew.

Abruptly rising to his feet, Sanji ensured that he kept his gaze averted as he somewhat desperately lit another cigarette, sucking it in deeply as he tried to figure out what to say.

"Oi, cook," Zoro said, furrowing his brow.

"What?" Sanji asked moodily, too preoccupied with fiddling with his lighter to turn around.

"Shit happens," he said simply. Then Sanji heard the sound of heavy footsteps followed by the door to the Crow's Nest swinging open.

Blinking in surprise, Sanji turned to face him. A blunder like that should have given Zoro enough munitions to keep harassing him for quite some time. He didn't expect him to just brush it off like it was nothing.

"I'm not saying I'm gonna get a hard-on for you," Zoro clarified, as his body was half-way out of the Crow's Nest, "but I don't think you need to make a face like that over something so unimportant."

Even after Zoro was gone, Sanji continued studying the trap door for some time, momentarily even forgetting the cigarette loosely dangling from his lips.

Finally, he drew in a deep breath, sinking into the bench behind the wall. "I don't know what the hell is up with you sometimes, shitty swordsman," he muttered to himself.

That stupid fucking moss-headed enigma of a man.

* * *

_**Sanji's bedroom**_

_**Present time, much later that night**_

_Ah, that's right_, Sanji thought, as he laid back on his bed. _We did have that kind of beginning._

He wasn't really sure what had sparked that kind of memory, but at the very least, it didn't leave him feeling like the ground had been wrenched from underneath him. Maybe the alcohol still swimming through his bloodstream, leaving him feeling pleasantly numb, was partially to thank for that, though.

Begrudgingly, the chef pulled himself into a sitting position. He was still fully clothed and he had not yet unmade the bed.

It was strange how the simple conversation had left him feeling so exhausted. Not that he and that enigmatic man really had that long of conversations. They tended to talk in bursts, and then just sort of drank in quiet silence most of the time. How long had it been going on? Only a couple of weeks, at most, but it felt far too long.

The meager conversation was probably exhausting because Sanji was not accustomed to that kind of contact anymore. Besides the spurious pleasantries he exchanged with his customers and the townsfolk, and the minimal time he spent interacting with his staff in the course of business, it had been awhile since he had been sincerely friendly with anyone to this degree, this often.

It was a little odd, actually. Isshin didn't seem like the kind of man to rashly approach people or start conversations. In fact, the small reputation he had picked up around the town was that he was generally somber and unapproachable.

Sanji snorted. That seemed a far cry from the nonchalant man who kept showing up on his patio, but they were entitled to their opinion.

Reluctantly, he pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the dresser to the far end of his room. Slowly, he pulled open the drawer, biting his lip as he stared down into it. After a moment, he reached into the pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a folded piece of cloth. Once he had replaced it in the drawer, he sullenly clicked it closed and started to remove his clothes.

His mind drifted back to that memory of Zoro. Even now, a flush of embarrassment and humiliation rolled over him as he recalled how he felt, when his body had surged with such a desire as he tumbled on top of the swordsman.

It wasn't really a beginning at all, but maybe it was the window into the absurd, contemptible thing it turned into.

And just like its wretched beginning, it also came to a fucked up end.

* * *

_**An uninhabited island in the New World**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

Although they were all a little disappointed that the island did not appear to be settled, there was no doubt that it was nothing short of picturesque. The landscaping was completely breathtaking. Dramatic cliffs shot up out of the ground, appearing to grow out of nowhere. And at the base, they were laced with sandy, white beaches.

Sanji stood in awe, looking up at the towering cliffs, wondering just how far they extended above him. He felt like even if they stacked eight or nine Sunny's on top of each other, mast and all, the tip-top would still not reach the upper-most point of the rocky heights.

Gazing upward from the beach, he noticed that the cliffs actually seemed to gradually start to overhang, so that when he stood with his back to the rock, he could not see the sky when he stared directly overhead.

"It looks like it's going to be hard to do any exploring here," Nami commented, who was also staring upward at the towering walls of rock, a slight crinkle in her brow.

"We could try to climb them and see if there's anything up there," Robin mentioned. "Although one misstep, and we'd surely plummet to our deaths."

The cook suddenly realized that the height of the precipice was vaguely reminiscent of the vast structure in the Drum Rockies, where his crew mate used to live—except for the warm, summer sunshine beating down, in a sharp contrast to the snow. Sanji glanced over at Chopper, who was staring upward, mouth hanging agape.

Grinning, Sanji bent over and patted him on the shoulder. "Kind of reminds you of that place, huh?"

The reindeer glanced over at him, an openly concerned expression on his face. "Ah... At first I thought it was kind of like where Drum Castle is. But for some reason, I get a bad feeling when I look up at these... I never felt like that there."

Sanji started to question him further, but then his captain's piercing voice wailed from a ways down the beach.

"Oi, Sanji, you'll climb it with us, right?" Luffy shouted, arms outstretched over his head and he waved to get Sanji's attention.

Usopp, standing next to Luffy, shook his head violently from side to side, eyes bulging slightly. "Oi oi, Luffy. I never said I was going to go with you!" he protested.

"I'll go," Zoro said, crossing his arms. For a moment, the swordsman's gaze flicked toward Sanji, and the cook clenched his jaw, expecting a goading comment. But instead, the other man broke the eye contact as quickly as it was made, defiantly turning away so his line of vision would not accidentally stray to the cook again.

Sanji's brow twitched in annoyance, but really, it wasn't that surprising... They hadn't spoken a word to each other for a couple of days now. It would probably blow over at some point, but even if it didn't, he had no particular reason to care. Even if it did make him inexplicably feel a little cranky, being ignored by the green-haired man, it was still no good reason to worry about it too much.

"Even if we climb it—which I am _very_ opposed to, by the way—we don't really have much reason to believe there's anything up there," Usopp pointed out.

"That's true," Nami agreed, nodding slightly as she continued to gaze upward.

"We won't know unless we go!" Luffy said energetically.

The cook wasn't particularly against the idea—but as he looked down the long, albeit narrow, expanse of snow-white sand stretched out in front of them, images of long, wet hair and swimsuits filled his head. And honestly, that sounded a hell of a lot better than climbing some hot rocks in the beating sun. Besides, from the way the sand looked, he suspected by the time the high tide came along, the sand would be covered and water would reached the edge of the cliffs, so it was now or never.

"Why don't we have some lunch first while we think about it?" Sanji broke in, outstretching his hand toward the beach. "We could make due with a pretty nice picnic out here."

With minimal coaxing—particularly with the promise of barbecued meat and chilled drinks—the crew expressed their approval. And so, the blonde-haired man diligently set to work preparing a decadent beach meal.

It was serene, sitting out on picnic blankets on the fine, pale sand. The weather was temperate and pleasant. The sun shone brightly, and Sanji was thankful that they hadn't pulled up to another end of the island, where they would be enshrouded in shadows at this time of day.

As they leisurely tried to decide whether they should try to scale the cliff, or try sailing further around the island first to see if there would be an easier place to get to the pinnacle of the rocky peaks, Sanji noticed a faint rumbling in the ground. He didn't think much of it as he started to pick up some off the empty plates and glasses that were starting to accumulate on the beach.

Really, he would have liked to have spent more time out there, relaxing on the sand, admiring Nami-san and Robin-chan in their bikinis. These moments made life worth living, after all. He glanced down at the water line; the tide had risen slightly, but they probably had a few more hours before the beach would disappear entirely.

Sanji opened his mouth to suggest they wait until tomorrow to try tackling the climb, but a more distinct rumbling sensation stopped the words in his throat.

Brow furrowing, he glanced downward at the sand. Indeed, as another tremor passed, he could see the larger pebbles in the sand trembling. And then, he felt a couple tiny pieces of debris hit him on the shoulder.

The cook looked up in horror. It was kind of astonishing how sometimes, the most dangerous catastrophes looked like they were happening in slow motion. As the rocks trembled and shifted, he gaped upward at it, dumbfounded. And then, at a deceitfully creeping pace, the cliff unhurriedly started to topple over.

And then his body sprang into action, as he began to move by instinct only, the sole thought on his mind being the need to get everyone to safety. At first, only small pieces of the shifting rocks were falling to the ground, but the size of the debris was undoubtedly increasing, as the grains became pebbles; the pebbles became rocks; the rocks became boulders; and then it was just great pieces of megalith raining down, as the daunting crags began to lean over them at more and more severe of an angle.

Franky hollered at everyone to get on the ship so they could use the _Coup de Burst _to get out of danger—although Sanji could barely hear the cyborg's loud voice over the awful cacophony of crumbling rocks. They had to move quickly; not even the Adam Wood could survive hundreds of thousands of tons of sedimentary rock crushing it.

As the last of them got on the ship, Sanji did his best to kick away the larger boulders that threatened to damage the ship. He glanced at the beach, now covered in darkness from the onerous, shifting cliff overhead, the abandoned dishes and picnic blankets already partially coated in dust and crumbled rocks.

He heard Nami barking out commands, and he heard Franky shout it was almost ready, and then the cries of Usopp and Chopper as they apparently came to the conclusion that it was too late, and they were all about to be crushed.

Sanji glanced to his side, and saw Luffy was next to him, a look of stark determination on his face as his fists began to gleam metallic from the armament haki. They gave each other a knowing look, and then the two men leapt toward the falling rocks in unison, setting their sights on the main body of the cliff that was mere seconds away from crashing down and engulfing the entire ship. Sanji gave it a flurry of his more ferocious kicks as Luffy released his _gomu gomu no gatling gun; _and for a very brief moment, it was pushed back incrementally.

With rising frenzy, Sanji could see they still wouldn't make it in time. He prepared to try again, and then suddenly, a blur of green shot past the edges of his peripheral vision with such tremendous force, Sanji could feel the ominous pressure emanating from it. Three swords drawn, Zoro hit the falling rubble of the cliff so forcefully that it was pushed back substantially.

"Franky's doing it now!" Nami yelled.

"Hold on, Zoro's not on the ship," Usopp shouted back at her.

"Do it now!" Zoro bellowed through clenched teeth. "You can come back for me later!"

"Same here!" Luffy shouted, jumping through the air after Zoro.

"Dammit, you idiots!" Nami screamed, a tinge of hysteria in her voice. "We'll be back for you soon!"

Sanji knew the kind of face she must have been making at that moment, being pressed to make such an unimaginable decision. It broke his heart to think about what she must have been feeling, but he was too busy fixing his attention on the swordsman and his captain to turn around.

A split second later, Nami called out to Franky, and the ship surged forward so quickly, Sanji was barely able to focus on what happened next as a chunk of rock, at least the size of the Mini-Merry, broke away and nearly landed right where Robin and Chopper were gripping the rail of the ship.

So quickly, Sanji didn't have time to react himself, Luffy reached out with a stretched limb and grabbed the side of the Sunny, snapping himself back in the direction of ship, kicking the enormous boulder out of the way just in the nick of time. His body tumbled onto the deck of the ship.

And then the ship was soaring through the air from the force of the _Coup de Burst_, and Sanji desperately tried to fix his attention back to where Zoro was, but he could barely make out a thing.

For a split second, his heart nearly leapt into his throat as he thought he may have seen the crumbling rocks engulf a flash of green, but he quickly talked himself down from the ledge. He could barely see what was happening, after all; it may not have even been the swordsman he was seeing. Besides, Zoro wasn't the kind of person who would get taken down by a couple of damn pebbles...

_I'd throw a fucking party. _

He shook his head, wondering why those words had suddenly popped into his head. Although he had no intention of apologizing, he admitted to himself that perhaps he _had _been a bit harsh in that conversation.

The chef wondered why he had such a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

* * *

_**The same island**_

_**Eight hours later**_

Like hot air, Sanji's hysteria steadily started to rise, as the hours gradually slipped through his fingers.

He had no idea how long it had been since the sun went down. Not that it mattered—sun or no sun, they had to keep looking. Too much time had elapsed; there was no time for sleep or food. They had to search.

He became vaguely aware of some of his other crew mates coming a little bit unglued, but as much as he tried to concern himself with it, he was only fixated on the pieces of rubble he frantically shoveled from one spot to another.

The only one he began to become more aware of was Luffy. It was to be expected; even he had an abstract sense of just how much his captain desired to protect them. Just how much he might fucking lose it if he failed at his task.

What's more, Sanji empathized and commiserated so much, he felt a knot in the back of his throat. He should have stayed back with Zoro; and surely, Luffy was regretting that he had to propel himself back to the ship at the last minute, too. Even if it was to save his other nakama, the idea of a choice of one or the other would never sit will with Luffy. It was always all-in for him. There was no compromise.

Until reality forced a cruel and irrevocable compromise on him. Like today.

With a shaking hand, Sanji tried to light the cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It took three or four tries for the flame to finally ignite—far more than what he had the patience for. He had not been able to locate the lighter he normally carried with him, but it's not like he cared if it was lost. He was just pissed that it took so long to light the cigarette, when he didn't have those kinds of precious seconds to waste.

His body ached and his hands were covered with cuts and scrapes from moving the vast amounts of rock and rubble.

Everyone used every ability and tool they had to search every inch of that place. Those who could swim took turns diving into the water to see if they could find any traces of him underneath the ocean's surface.

The couple of traces they found never included the swordsman himself.

With a trembling hand, Sanji squeezed a dirty, water-logged strip of black cloth. The stupid bandana Zoro always had on him had washed ashore, when the tide started to fall in the small hours of the morning.

"What a shitty find," Sanji murmured under his breath, clutching it ever tighter.

If he died... _I'd throw a fucking party_.

The breath hitched in his throat. As the night had worn on, the last conversation had begun to endlessly loop in his mind.

No, he wouldn't let it be the last; the shitty swordsman was probably sleeping somewhere under the rocks, and any moment now, he might burst out, rubbing sleep from his eye, with a lame excuse about how he hadn't bothered to show himself earlier because he was taking a nap.

Hours began to turn into days, and the hysteria was falling, only to fade into something more akin to despair.

Any moment... he would burst out... claiming he needed a couple-day-long nap.

_Right, shitty marimo?_


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

_**Sanji's living room**_

_**A couple of nights later**_

Sanji awakened to the familiar sound of a patio chair scraping against wood. He was surprised at himself, for having dozed off when all he had meant to do was lay back on the sofa for a moment. Although he had not been sleeping well lately, even the most unbearable weariness was usually not enough to help him sleep.

Groggily, he pulled himself upright, glancing at the clock on the wall. He had not been asleep for long. Although it was always rather late when he got home after closing the restaurant, it certainly wasn't late enough to preclude a visitor. And so, it was easy to conclude that unmistakable sound was being caused by a certain man.

_That's every night this week that shitty headdress has shown up here_, he thought irritably. He wasn't in the mood to deal with him right now; not tonight. His head hurt and he felt beyond fatigued.

Grumpily, he walked to the glass door that led to the patio, throwing it open in anger. A burst of startlingly biting air rushed toward him, although the coolness was not nearly enough to chill his slowly burning temper.

Isshin turned to look at him, only his grin visible beyond the black mask and headdress. He nodded his head in greeting. He looked aggravatingly nonchalant, for a man who had just made himself comfortable, despite once again not being invited.

"I was starting to think you weren't going to come out tonight," Isshin called out, turning his body in the chair a bit more so he could more fully face Sanji.

The cook furrowed his brow. "I wasn't planning on it," he replied simply.

"Well, you're here now. Come on, let's drink."

His brow twitched. "Oi, listen, I've been putting up with you almost every night lately, but enough is enough."

Another crisp gust of air blew in. This time, Sanji actually took notice of it. Taking a step outside, he looked up and realized the sky was completely black.

"Ah, that a hint for me to leave, then?" Isshin asked.

"I think it's more than a hint," Sanji replied moodily, his gaze momentarily ripped away from the dark clouds as he glared at him again.

The grin faded slightly. "If I've been that much of a bother, you should've told me to go before," he said a bit more seriously.

Sanji raised an eyebrow. "Did you think dropping in on someone every damn night wasn't troublesome?"

Isshin shrugged. "You didn't seem to mind. Not my fault that you couldn't open your damn mouth about it." He turned around and started to walk away. "I'll see you tomorrow—don't worry, only at your restaurant, though."

And just as the man dressed in black turned his back on him completely, another brisk wind hit him, and a moment later, the sky opened up.

It was one of those rains that began unhurriedly, with chilled, plump drops noisily crashing to the ground. And then, incrementally, the rain's momentum began to increase, streaking the space in the distance beyond with smears of black and gray. In a couple of minutes, it would be pouring buckets; it wasn't uncommon for this kind of storm to hit the island, though.

As he looked at Isshin again, Sanji heaved a sigh; he already knew he was going to regret this, even if he couldn't quite fathom how much.

"Oi, come back," he called out. "This is going to get a hell of a lot worse in second."

Isshin looked over his shoulder, and started to decline.

"Just come over here, bastard," he snapped, opening the door wider and stepping aside.

"What?"

"I'm inviting you in," Sanji barked, gritting his teeth.

The other man stared at him wordlessly for a moment—he wished he could see his damned expression. He could make out a slight tension on his lips that might have been hesitation. But it was impossible to tell. "Alright," he nodded finally, turning around and somewhat hesitantly walking toward the open doorway.

It was the first time the other man had actually been inside of his home. In fact, it was the first time in a long time that _anyone_ had been in his home.

"Let's get a drink first," he sighed, leading him through the living room that was immediately inside of the patio doors, back toward the dining area and kitchen. Sanji opened a large pantry that opened to a cool, dark room with a great number of bottles of wine stored on a rack. "I'm out of sake... There's mostly wine in here, although I probably have a couple bottles left of something harder if you prefer."

"Wine's good."

"You have a preference?" Sanji asked, turning to glance back at him from inside of the dark room.

"Red and dry," the other man replied.

Sanji studied the bottles for a moment before pulling a dusty, dark green bottle from the far end.

Wordlessly, he turned to the kitchen, pulled out a couple of wineglasses and uncorked the bottle. Even for the house-guest he never wanted, he couldn't help but serve the wine with a flourish. Once the glasses were poured, he gracefully passed one to Isshin.

"Thanks... _Sanji,_" he said, instantly taking a hearty gulp.

One again, Sanji felt the hair on the back of his neck rise; he really hated the way this man pronounced his name. Holding back a shudder, the cook nodded toward the living room. "Let's sit in there."

"I can't say I'm not surprised by that cellar of yours," Isshin commented, taking a seat at one of the open chairs. "Why do you have so much wine, anyway?"

The cook raised an eyebrow. "Is that really a question? Why the hell else does someone have a lot of one thing—I like it, of course."

"Tch, but it's a shame to have so much that hasn't been drank yet."

"We've made a good dent in it over the past couple of weeks," Sanji said pointedly.

"Oi, I've brought some bottles, too."

Sanji swirled the contents of his glass, smirking slightly. "That's probably the only reason I have anything left."

It was a different ambiance, sitting inside of the house, leisurely chatting with this man. He noted that even inside, he still kept on every article of his slightly damp clothing, from the feathered headdress to his heavy boots to the long robe he always wore. Although, as he looked a little closer at the hand holding the wine glass, he realized he had actually removed his gloves; it was the first time he had seen his hands exposed like that. Well, one of them, at least; the other was presumably tucked away underneath his long sleeves.

"This isn't bad, actually," Isshin commented as he finished the rest of his glass. Instinctively, Sanji got up to grab the bottle so he could refill it.

"Of course it's not bad. I don't buy anything but good alcohol," Sanji replied curtly, as he poured the other man's glass and topped his own off as well.

After settling back in the chair and taking a few long sips, the pirate produced a cigar from his pocket. "You mind?"

"Do what you want," he replied with a sigh.

"Oi, you want one?" he asked, holding it out.

Sanji shook his head. "No thanks."

"Ah, that's right, you don't smoke," Isshin said. "Not even a cigar, every now and then?"

Furrowing his brow, Sanji replied curtly, "No, not even then."

"Tch, your loss, then."

"Yeah, I supposed so," Sanji murmured.

Oddly enough, Sanji noticed that for a moment, Isshin faltered as he reached inside of his coat. He raised an eyebrow curiously. "Something wrong?"

"No, nothing," the other man replied, clutching the unlit cigar in his teeth.

"I'll get you an ashtray," Sanji replied tiredly, rising to his feet. "You need a light or something?"

There was a twitch of something indiscernible in his mouth. "No, I've got one."

As he walked into the kitchen, Sanji couldn't help but be a bit annoyed by that twitch. It was so hard to tell what the hell was going through this man's head. It looked almost like—relief, maybe. What kind of shitty man feels the need to hide his face like that, he wondered moodily.

He heard the click of a lighter from the other room as he dug through an old drawer. Finally locating an ashtray—he was lucky he had one at all, really—he returned to the other room and set it down on the table next to his visitor's chair.

As they continued conversing, for some reason, Sanji found himself becoming increasingly more annoyed at his hidden features. Beside his mouth, he occasionally he noticed the glint of an eye through the mask beneath the headdress, but not enough to even see what color eyes he had. Why, he couldn't even tell exactly how tall he was with that ridiculous thing on his head.

"So why'd you name it 'Trois Bleu,' anyway?" Isshin asked, as the topic of conversation turned toward the restaurant.

Sanji shrugged. "We're in All Blue. It seemed like the thing to do."

"Ah, I could've guessed that part," he said with some annoyance. "But why the three?"

Closing his eyes, Sanji mulled over the question for a moment. He was actually surprised that the man knew _trois_ meant three—he didn't seem like the kind of person to pay attention to things like that. "That's personal," he finally replied.

"You named your whole restaurant that, how personal can it be?"

"The reason is personal."

"Tch. You can be a real bastard, you know that."

Sanji's eyebrow twitched violently. "I'm a bastard? Who's the shitty pirate who keeps showing up at my house unannounced like it's a damned bar?"

"I thought I was doing you a favor, since you looked lonely sitting out there by yourself," he said, removing the cigar from his mouth for a moment.

"If I wanted company, there are over a dozen taverns in walking distance."

"Ah, but you weren't going to come out tonight until you noticed I was there," he started, turning his head slightly in his direction. "Doesn't that mean you wanted to drink with me tonight?"

"It sure as hell does not," Sanji replied through clenched teeth, taking a sip of his drink darkly. "But there's no way I was getting back to sleep knowing you were holing up on my damned patio."

"So you don't sit out there every night?"

The cook shifted his position slightly, growing increasingly agitated at the barrage of questions. "I do it when I feel like it, I don't have a damn schedule."

"I'm just asking. You don't need to get so pissed off."

"I'm getting sick of your questions, that's all," Sanji replied shortly.

"That so," the other man said, his tone noticeably more subdued. He set his wine glass down on the end table "Okay, I'll keep it down to two more questions."

Someone, the change in the intonation of his voice made Sanji feel increasingly uneasy. He glared down at his glass anxiously, gazing at the crimson wine rather than at the annoying man. "How about no more questions. This is really getting old."

"Two more," he repeated solemnly. "And then... Then, you can ask me whatever you want."

"The only thing I want to ask you is when you're leaving," Sanji replied with irritation; not that he really expected him to leave. He could tell from the sound of the rain on the roof that the storm was still raging outside.

"Tch, I bet you're wrong," Isshin replied, a bit confidently.

Sanji closed his eyes, bowing his head down as he tiredly rubbed his temple. Conversing with this man was causing such a familiar headache.

"So what the hell are the questions?" Sanji barked finally, his head still in his hands. He was faintly aware that the man had stood, but he did not look up.

"First, when did you quit smoking?" he started. He heard the sound of something falling to the floor—something soft, so it just barely made a rustling noise as it collided with the wood.

Sanji inhaled sharply; that was strange, that he would know to ask such a question. Not many people would have known that particular detail about his old habits, and how he used to constantly have a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. As he hesitated to answer, the other man continued to speak.

"And second," he said, as Sanji heard sound of more rustling fabric, "when the hell did you stop being an ero-cook?"

His heart halted for a few seconds, right before it started to sputter madly out of control.

Sanji tried to take in a shocked breath, but suddenly, he felt like all of the oxygen had been stripped out of the room, and he could no longer draw air into his lungs. When he finally looked up at the other man, he felt like his body was moving in slow motion, despite how quickly he wanted to spring into action—how desperately he wanted to confirm the crippling suspicion about this man's identity, even if he had never had it until this very moment.

And yet, he was also terrified to look up. So first, his gaze fell to the floor, when he saw the black feathered headdress, discarded carelessly on the ground. His eyes traveled further upward, and he saw the black cloak had been tossed on the back of the chair.

Unthinkingly, Sanji rose to his feet to study the man. He face was still covered, but without these things, it was easier to get an idea of the other man's height and body. Underneath the cloak, he was wearing simple, plain clothes that clung loosely to his muscular, broad-shouldered body. Long sleeves extended past his wrists, or so he thought. He was near the same height as Sanji, as well—perhaps slightly taller, at most. Not nearly as tall as he had seemed before, with the headdress on.

But Sanji only took a moment to study his body before his eyes rested on his face. He had just peeled off the mask that covered his head. First, his face was exposed, revealing one eye with its penetrating stare fixed on him. The other eye, however, was permanently sealed shut by a faded scar.

Then the black mask was pulled off completely, revealing short hair that had mostly turned a silvery gray—but even in the dark evening lights, the strands seemed to reflect a faint glimmer of green.

Sanji stared, open-mouthed and utterly unable to form a single word for what felt like an infinite span of time.

Before he knew it, however, he had taken a few steps closer to the all-too-familiar swordsman.

Familiar, yet different.

Finally standing right in front of him, Sanji took in the changed features.

Like him, he looked older; there were telltale lines riddled around his mouth and eyes. The ear that had once displayed three proud golden earrings was missing a large chunk of its lobe, and the piercings were no longer there. In additional to the scar over his left eye, there was a deep gash along his left cheek that ran the length of his neck, disappearing under his shirt by his shoulder.

And as he looked down at his body again, taking a closer look, he realized the reason for the seemingly long sleeves; Zoro was missing his right arm.

When Sanji finally felt like he could breathe again, he inhaled big, awkward gulps of air, still stunned speechless as the two men stared at each other.

"You..." he finally managed to croak, drawing closer, peering closely at his face. He didn't know what to say, though. His brain was unable to process what was happening in front of him. There was no need to ask himself foolish questions like whether this was a dream; he could tell by the sensation of his heart reverberating painfully in his chest that it was real. Excruciatingly real.

"Zoro," he finally said with difficulty, his voice thick, overcome with emotion.

There was a flood of feelings coursing through his body, but the one that was slowly rising to the surface was that of anger. No, beyond anger; a fiery rage like nothing he had ever felt before. It was like a searing-hot magma that had been bubbling in him for years was finally ready to erupt.

"If you're alive, where the hell have you been all this time?" he clamored, grasping the front of Zoro's shirt and shaking him. His voice was livid and tinged with some kind of strained sadness, but he didn't even care if he sounded like a fool.

Zoro's smile slowly faded. "Ah, see, I told you that you'd want to ask me questions..."

"That's the only one I want to know the answer to," Sanji said, still shouting, although a bit less harshly than before. "It's been over twenty years, you bastard... You shitty swordsman!"

He raised a hand to his mouth as he said the nickname; even if he'd thought it thousands of times in his mind, it had been so long since he had actually _spoken_ those words. With a pained expression, he met Zoro's gaze again.

The swordsman, in turn, averted his gaze. "There were a lot of things that happened. By the time I could have met up with you all, it was already too late."

"So you let the rest of us think you were still dead? What kind of bullshit is that? And what the hell is up with this shitty fake identity you've been using? Who the hell is Isshin supposed to be?!"

Zoro stepped back, sighing heavily. "That's actually a lot more than one question." He bent his head down and rubbed his temples. "There are reasons..."

Once again, Sanji grasped the front of his shirt, thrusting himself in the other man's face angrily, until their faces nearly touched.

"I don't care about your reasons! Where have you fucking been all these years?" Sanji asked again, the words feeling strained on his lips. There was so much he wanted to say, but he couldn't even find the words. Maybe the choking emotion in his voice would be enough to convey his messed up feelings.

Zoro bit his lower lip, closing his eye in thought.

"We tore up every fucking piece of fallen rock, we dug in the dirt and sand, dove in the water again and again..." he started. "And no matter what we did, we couldn't find you..."

"I can't imagine what that was like."

"I've been mourning your death for over twenty years," Sanji went on, his voice strained, almost a shouting whisper. He realized he sounded like a fool, and that he would probably regret the words. But whether he could not control himself or he just didn't care to, he didn't hold back. There was so much he wanted to say, so many thoughts flooding his head, he didn't know where to start. "If there's really a reason, it better be a fucking good one," he barked.

Unexpectedly, Zoro reached up with one arm—his only arm—and wrapped it around Sanji's shoulders, pulling the cook into an awkward embrace. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

It was then that Sanji felt a tightness in his throat. It was a weird feeling; he hadn't cried in so long. Hadn't felt anything like this in so long. But he really hadn't expected the swordsman to do that—to apologize, or to reach out to him like that.

And he really hadn't expected to feel that embrace _ever again_.

But the sadness was once again overcome by anger; Zoro had left him thinking he was dead for all this time. He had to focus on the rage, because he had no idea what the hell else to do.

For a few moments, he remained motionless, not returning the embrace. When he felt like he had regained some composure, he pulled himself away, shoving the swordsman off of him, although there wasn't much force behind the push.

Sanji dragged his chair closer, turning it to face Zoro directly. Before taking a seat, he went to the kitchen to open a new bottle of wine and refill their glasses with a heavy-handed pour. He couldn't speak for Zoro, but he sure as hell would probably need it. When he returned to the living room, Zoro was already seated.

"Alright, let's hear it," he said finally, a complicated expression on his face as he sat down in the chair, staring at Zoro with an interrogating gaze. "Tell me where the fuck you've been all this time."

Zoro nodded slowly, taking a deep swig from his glass as he leaned back in his chair. "I planned on telling you, anyway. About what happened, after I tried to stop that landslide from hitting the Sunny..."

The silver-and-green-haired swordsman closed his eye for a moment, the deep lines in his forehead and mouth deepening as he gathered his thoughts. When he finally started to speak, he said many words, and Sanji couldn't help but notice just how different this older-man version of him was from his young, stubborn self who refused to speak about anything.

"When I first woke up, I was in a hell of a lot of pain," he started, finally opening his eye again. "There was a man and his wife looking after me. I was resisting, shouting for the crew, trying to figure out where I was, but I can't remember much more than that. I was in and out for a couple days. But when I finally got it together, I learned there was a village in the center of that island. It was all surrounded by tall cliffs—I don't know if you remember—"

"I could never forget," Sanji muttered. "I spent so long digging through the rubble of just a fragment of those shitty cliffs."

Zoro nodded slightly, the point clearly taken. "Yeah, well, the whole island was like that. The village was pretty quiet, but to get out of it—you had to get through those cliffs, and there were a lot of dangerous beasts you had to fight to make it out."

"If it's that hard to get out, how the hell did you wind up inside, then?"

"I'm getting to that part, cook. Just wait a damn minute."

Irritated, Sanji clamped his jaw closed, his teeth clacking noisily.

"That guy told me I'd washed up through in an underwater canal that flowed into the inhabited part of the island. He said I was so bad off, he was just trying to keep me comfortable until I passed. He was pretty surprised when I came to... I do remember that."

Suddenly Zoro's face turned grim, and he raised his hand, pressing a finger to his mouth, as though he didn't quite want to go onto the next part.

Sanji silently watched him, recognizing a flicker of emotion that he could sympathize with a little too much. The word _torment_ flashed through his head. Patiently, he waited for the next words.

"And he—he was a doctor, I probably should've mentioned that—he had taken off my arm. He said it was half-torn off anyway, and the part that was still there was... I guess it was smashed up pretty bad. Would have never healed in a way I could have used it."

"Oi, that's..." Sanji tried to speak, wanted to acknowledge just how cruel he understood it was, to hear of the swordsman losing such an essential piece of himself, but he realized there was no point in saying it. He should understand; if this man sitting before him was anything like the shitty swordsman he had known all those years ago, he would understand Sanji's sympathy without the words.

"You don't need to say it," Zoro sighed, reaffirming his thoughts. "But you can probably guess how I reacted."

Sanji nodded slowly. Just the thought of it kind of made him feel like his heart was breaking.

For a moment, his mind flashed on Zeff, and how long it had truly taken the man to seem to get over losing his leg. Even through the happy times, there was a sadness that still surfaced from time to time. His trademark, gone in an instant, leaving him forever changed and less of a man than he used to be.

"But I couldn't move that much, because I had broken bones all over my body. A bunch of the bones in my back, my legs... And hell, every one of my damn ribs felt cracked."

It was Sanji's turn to cover his mouth, as though stopping himself from speaking was going to make the painful words stop. A thousand regrets washed over him. He wondered why he didn't recall seeing an underground channel. What if he just had not looked hard enough—or he had seen it, and just overlooked it. What if he could have swam through it and found him, or climbed the damn cliffs and gotten him back...

"There's not really a lot else to say, actually. I just had to wait for my useless body to heal. It was months before I could even walk right, let alone fight. It took me three years to get back to a point where I could even think about going back to being a pirate. But when I was strong enough, I left."

"Three years," Sanji muttered. The number seemed impossible; that the man in front of him, one of the strongest people he had ever met in his life, had been unable to even take a few steps forward, was unfathomable.

But he realized he had to say something. He had been silently staring at the ground in despair. He knew he must have looked odd. So he finally mustered the words, "That's what you meant when you said it was too late, then."

"Yeah. There wasn't a crew to go back to, even if I wanted to."

"Yeah, there wasn't." A wave of familiar revulsion passed over him.

Zoro looked up at him. "I read it in the paper. What happened that day. What Luffy—"

"Yeah, I'm sure you did," the cook cut him off abruptly, reaching for his wine glass with a slightly trembling hand. Realizing it was empty, he reached for the bottle and poured himself another glass.

There was no way he could talk to Zoro about what he was trying to bring up, though. He could barely think about it too long himself. Just like the swordsman's alleged death, it was a scar too horrible to wear brazenly in the open. That's why, the chef was thankful when Zoro started speaking again, clearly picking up on his cue that he did not want to pursue this topic.

"It still took a few years for me to become strong as I had been. And by the time I'd gotten there, I had started to make a name for myself."

Sanji studied him for a long moment, and the other man just stared back at him, not intimidated in the slightest by Sanji's piercing gaze.

It wasn't the most thorough explanation, but the other man's story had at least explained to him somewhat about what had happened.

"But it's been over twenty damn years, Zoro," he said finally, his voice openly tremulous. "You just told me about, what, six years before you were as strong as you used to be? Why did it take you this long to... to..." He bit down on his lip as he tried to figure out what he wanted to say. _To come find me?_ The words caught in his throat; he couldn't say such a stupid thing.

But wait, that was the stupid mistake he kept making in his youth. And what the hell did he ever accomplish back then.

"How long have you known I was here?" Sanji asked quietly.

Zoro averted his gaze. "I don't really remember. Your location isn't exactly a secret, though, so it only took a little asking around to find out."

"That means it wasn't long after you left that shitty island then, doesn't it," he said slowly, rising to his feet.

The lines in the swordsman's forehead deepened. "Ah, that's right."

Sanji stepped toward him, until he was standing directly in front of the other man. "Then why the hell didn't you come here earlier, shitty marimo?" he asked with difficulty.

Zoro rose to his feet.

"There were reasons," he said.

"Like hell," Sanji muttered in reply.

They stared at each other a long moment, eyes locked, studying one another with mutually pained expressions on their faces.

And then, it really struck him; Zoro was in front of him. He could see him. He could hear his low, rumbling voice, rendered slightly more gravelly from the years. And he could reach out and touch him, and he would feel _life_.

Zoro was _alive._

Sanji leaned in toward him, and the swordsman didn't back away. Rather, they leaned in closer and closer, until their foreheads just barely brushed together. His breath felt hot on his face, and smelled faintly of wine and cigars.

This kind of moment... His reaction back then would have been to shove him away, to aim a strong foot squarely in his broad chest and send the swordsman flying. But he was older now. He was a little less hot-headed—and after spending so much time resisting the pieces of himself he didn't favor, there was at least a small fragment he could own up to.

And Zoro was clearly different, too. The once inarticulate man who never said what he was thinking or what he desired, who seemed unable to so much as _speak _at the moments he needed to most, was now far more direct.

So direct, he apparently no longer had trouble expressing his desires.

"I want to kiss you," he murmured lowly, turning his head slightly, but still not quite connecting their lips.

Sanji closed his eyes, turning his head as well, as he softly replied, "I won't tell you no."

The two men tentatively pressed their lips together. At first, the touch was slight, as though they were both afraid of what would happen once they reestablished this connection that had been severed so many years ago.

But soon, they both began to respond more desperately. Sanji felt the swordsman's hand reach up to touch his face, roughly rubbing the stubble on his cheek. The hand was more calloused than he recalled; and surely, he himself was less well-kept than the swordsman remembered.

Sanji wrapped his arms against his waist until his hands met at the small of the other man's back... around that body he never thought he'd feel again. It almost hurt too much to touch—almost as bad as it would have hurt to pull away.

They deepened the kiss, and Sanji noted that it seemed Zoro had gotten better at kissing somewhere along the way. The once clumsy, aggressive tongue was more focused than it used to be, moving with a purpose, brushing against his own tongue with soft, pleasurable sensations that made a shiver run down his spine.

But instead of lust or desire, Sanji felt himself taken over by an overwhelming sadness. The kiss tasted of the wasted years, of all the time they had spent apart, when so many times he had longed to see him again.

"If I had known you were still alive, I would have done anything to find you," Sanji murmured unthinkingly when they pulled apart, a pained expression on his face. Instantly, he pressed his fingers to his lips, realizing the words were probably a mistake.

But Zoro didn't react negatively. "I'm sorry," he said again, the grievous expression on his face undeniably heart-wrenching to Sanji.

Sanji replaced his hand on the swordsman back and leaned forward, pressing his mouth to Zoro's neck, kissing it softly. The cook realized that his hands were trembling faintly, but he didn't care if the other man noticed.

"There's no point in apologizing... Just, dammit. Let's not waste anymore time."


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

_**Sanji's living room**_

_**Present time**_

When they sat back down, they took a seat on the sofa, where they could be at least fractionally closer to each other. Sanji roughly took the swordsman's hand in his own, interlacing their fingers and clutching firmly. Maybe he should have felt self-conscious or embarrassed, but quite frankly, he was long past the point of giving a shit.

His mind, instead, kept flickering back to that time. That awful, hot, balmy summer island. His hands, raw from lifting chunks of rubble and rocks, tossing them to a new pile. The crew trying to methodically search for what was ever-increasingly likely to be the swordsman's corpse. Trying to be logical and systematic when their minds and bodies were raw from emotion and labor.

But no matter how distraught he was, he should have kept looking. They never found a trace of Zoro's body. He should have kept looking, because _he was still alive_.

Unintentionally, his grip on the swordsman's hand tightened.

"What is it?" Zoro asked, glancing over at him.

Sanji furrowed his brow, briefly debating whether he should answer before realizing it was stupid to even worry about something like that anymore. "I never should have left that shitty cliff-ridden island," he admitted through slightly gritted teeth, closing his eyes.

Zoro shook his head in disagreement. "Even if you stayed there for months, you might've never figured out there was a village in the middle of it."

"But we didn't find you," Sanji said solemnly. He opened his eyes, staring downward, recalling that horrible time. "We shouldn't have left until we did."

"How long did you look for me?"

"Ten days," Sanji said quietly, his voice barely more than a whisper. "Only ten days..."

Zoro leaned back, tilting his head upward toward the ceiling. "Tch, that was a long time to search that small area. It's pretty common for a body to get lost at sea. I don't know who made the call, but it was the right decision. You couldn't stay there forever."

"Yeah, but we never found a trace of you..."

Suddenly, the cook abruptly sat upright, pressing his fingers against his lips. "No, that's not right," he muttered, more to himself than to the swordsman.

Zoro raised an eyebrow, but he did not speak; the look on his face indicated that he had no idea what to even say to Sanji's troubled words.

Rising to his feet, Sanji briskly walked into the kitchen, where much earlier that evening, he had slung his suit coat over the back of a chair. After digging around inside of the pocket for a moment, he pulled something out. He returned to the living room and wordlessly sat back down on the couch, uneasily pressing a folded scrap of worn-out black cloth into Zoro's hand.

Bewildered, the swordsman stared down at it incredulously, unfolding the small piece of cloth. "Is this..." Zoro murmured, turning it over in his hands. It was undeniably familiar; the black bandana that he used to always have on his person, wherever he went. "Oi, I can't believe you have this."

After scrutinizing it for a moment, he looked up at Sanji. "But wasn't that the jacket you were wearing today?" He beckoned toward the black jacket hanging up on the chair in the kitchen. Before he could give the cook a chance to answer, his brow furrowed slightly. "Why were you carrying this with you?"

Sanji's expression faltered. He quickly averted his gaze, peering downward at the floor, turning his body to the side. He wanted to make up a stupid reason, like he happened to accidentally grab it instead of a handkerchief that day. But after all of the remorse he had felt over the years for never saying what he really meant, it seemed ridiculous to say such a stupid thing.

"Why do you think?" he muttered finally, his voice just loud enough for the swordsman to hear.

When he finally looked up at Zoro's face again, he saw the corner of his mouth was twitching slightly, until finally, the vaguest hint of a smile appeared. "That so," he murmured.

Sanji exhaled loudly as Zoro rose to his feet. Like the cook, he headed toward his own black cloak he had discarded just a short while ago, digging through the inside pockets. When he turned back toward Sanji, he held out a small, rectangular item, and tossed it toward him.

Catching it, he peered at it inquisitively. It was a lighter, made out of some kind of metal, tarnished brown with time. Sanji blinked in surprise; it was hard to tell, but it seemed very familiar to him.

"This is... my old lighter?" he asked disbelievingly.

Zoro nodded. "You had left it up in the Crow's Nest, that last night we..." he started, letting the words trail off. "It was in my pocket. I was going to return it to you, but I didn't get the chance."

"What shitty, sentimental fools we are," Sanji muttered under his breath, closing his eyes as he shook his head from side to side. A hint of a smile played at his lips.

But suddenly, he opened his eyes wide, jerking his head toward Zoro. "There's one other thing, though."

"Hah, what?"

He beckoned toward the hallway. "Come with me," he urged, unthinkingly grabbing Zoro by his wrist, pulling him to his feet.

They wound up in Sanji's bedroom.

Zoro looked around the simple room with surprise. Like the rest of the house, everything was functional, without even a hint of decoration or warmth. Besides two nightstands on each side of a large bed, a full-length mirror, and a large dresser at the wall nearest the foot of the bed, the room was devoid of any other furnishings.

"Oi, why are we in your bedroom, ero-cook?"

"Didn't you say I wasn't an ero-cook anymore?" Sanji asked, as he turned his head to look at him from over his shoulder. Then Sanji walked to the dresser and paused for a moment, a slightly tremulous hand clutching the knob.

"Well, I won't complain if I was wrong..." Zoro started, but if he had any more words to add, he did not finish them.

Sanji had slid open the drawer while the swordsman had been talking, and pulled out a katana with a familiar white hilt and sheath. Wordlessly, he turned toward Zoro, holding it up in both hands, as though offering it to him.

Zoro stared in silence, his jaw agape, his eye flooded with emotions that Sanji couldn't quite name, but that he easily understood. That feeling of being reunited with something thought to be lost forever, after so much time...

Taking a choppy step forward, Zoro reached out to accept it. "Wado Ichimonji," he murmured under his breath, as though the words were a name he had not spoken in a long time.

Incredulously, he looked up at Sanji, his eye wide. There was a small bead of perspiration dripping down his forehead as he clasped the katana with his single hand so tightly, his knuckles began to turn white. "I thought it was gone..." he murmured.

Sanji shook his head negatively. "I found it in the deepest part of the water where you disappeared." He averted his gaze, his brow knitted as he focused on the grains of wood of the floor. "That scrap of cloth and this were the only things we found."

To his surprise, Zoro clutched the sword against him, closing his eye. For a moment, the lines in his face seemed to slightly subside, as an expression of relief flooded his features. Sanji felt the breath catch in his throat; new scars and gray hair aside, this face was very close to the Zoro he had known in his youth. He felt a painful tugging in his chest, as once again, it hit him that this was the man he thought he had lost.

"Finally," the swordsman murmured, his tone barely audible. Sanji took a step back, understanding that the other man had something going through his mind that was private.

Although he did not know what those thoughts were, he knew they were related to torments from his past that made Zoro seem like such a difficult person sometimes. The cook didn't know any of the details of Zoro's youth, other than the name _Kuina _that he had heard spoken a time or two. He didn't know how the swordsman had acquired that blade. And he never knew why Zoro desired to be the strongest swordsman.

But Sanji had noticed the emotion toward this sword, faintly trickling through Zoro's often unreadable countenance throughout the years he had known him.

When Zoro finally looked up again, he turned to fix his gaze on Sanji, a thin, barely discernible smile on his lips.

"You've helped me fulfill a promise."

"That so," Sanji said quietly.

"Ah," he nodded, a look of satisfaction on his face. Then Zoro suddenly approached him, wrapping his arm around his shoulders; he was still clutching the Wado Ichimonji in his hand, carefully positioning it so the sheath wouldn't accidentally bump Sanji's body.

He drew his lips near the cook's until they touched. Almost instantly, Sanji felt a warm tingle run up his spine. The kiss was so eager and flooded with a joyful gratitude that he was certain the shitty swordsman could have never expressed in words. But as lips pressed together firmly, tongues lightly brushing and sliding against each other, he could hear the other man's message loud and clear.

It was strange how such a pleasant feeling made him feel so ineffably sad.

When they pulled apart, Sanji didn't really know what words to say or what to do next. The whole evening had been such a drain on his emotions. He glanced over at the bedroom door, assuming they would head back to the living room next.

But the other man had a different idea. He walked over to the dresser, setting the Wado Ichimonji on top of it, before turning back toward the cook.

"Again," Zoro said suddenly, taking a brisk step toward him, bringing their mouths together.

Although Sanji was trying to will away a knot forming in the pit of his stomach, the feeling of the other man's yearning lips hotly pressing against his probably did the job better than he ever could have done on his own.

The lingering sadness was still ever-present, but as they increased the intensity of the kiss, Sanji noticed there was another emotion slowly sifting toward the surface... something new. Or perhaps, something that had once been lost.

It had been so long since he had felt even a flicker of what could be called happiness. He lived a life filled with satisfactory events and accomplishments; notches on a scorecard that would make him be able to look back on his life and say, "Alright, I accomplished a lot." But the feeling of joy, elation... it was no longer in her repertoire of emotions.

Not that he had really minded, either. Sometimes he felt a slight pang of regret that he no longer felt the same earnest joy from preparing succulent meals for hungry travelers. But he still enjoyed it, and his food was still delicious and left his customers happy, so that was all that mattered. It was okay for him to be drowning in apathy, as long as he could still give someone a small piece of happiness.

But this feeling, sparking in the depths of his soul and manifesting somewhere in his chest, in the form of a tight-but-delightful pang, reminded him of when he felt such an emotion...

Sanji hungrily deepened the kiss, wanting to devour the feeling, devour the swordsman himself. Zoro did not once object or even try to pull away. He responded with the same predatory lust than was overtaking the cook, controlling his actions.

"Oi, Sanji," Zoro pulled away from his mouth, repositioning his lips against the side of Sanji's face, his baritone voice rumbling in his ear.

The cook shivered. It was strange hearing the other man use his actual name. Come to think of it, before he had known it was Zoro, it had always made him feel uneasy whenever Isshin had spoken his name.

But until he had said his name under the guise of "Isshin," the cook had never heard the swordsman utter his name before, not even once. Perhaps that was why it was so unrecognizable to him.

"What is it?" Sanji asked breathlessly, sliding his hand up Zoro's chest, over the thin fabric of his shirt.

"I want to... like the way we used to do it."

The swordsman's hand slid down to the bulge in Sanji's pants, and the cook gasped before he could even think about stopping himself.

He wanted it to, though... So desperately he could not even put it into words. Panting heavily, the cook eagerly attacked Zoro, crushing their mouths together as he shoved the other man backward onto the bed.

"Tch, your clothes still have too many things to do to take them off," Zoro muttered, struggling to unbutton Sanji's shirt as the cook laid on top of him.

Yet he managed to get them undone, one-handed and all, and soon Sanji's shirt was being pulled off of his back as he tried to pull the other man's long-sleeved shirt over his head.

The swordsman's expression flickered with something like uncertainty for a split second, and Sanji felt the breath catch in his throat.

It was a hesitation he had never seen intermingled in the other man's lustful gaze before, and it was off-putting enough to make Sanji reflexively back away. He realized he had been feeling a bit lost in the euphoria-inducing moment, but that slight falter was enough to rip him back into reality—the reality where he had doubts and fears, and where he believed that the price to pay for even a shred of happiness was several times worth of agony.

He almost felt an insult form at the tip of his tongue—it probably would've tumbled out in a horrible burst when he was younger, but now, he had just enough self-control to stop himself. After all, he only wanted to insult Zoro because for a moment, he himself had felt uncomfortable, alarmed that he had done something he shouldn't have.

In his youth, he had never really gotten to figure out what some of those conflicting looks Zoro gave him meant. As he had grown older, he had torn himself apart inside, wondering just what those things were that he had missed. He didn't want that to happen again. He had to find out, _now_, because he never knew when it might be too late.

So instead, he took a deep breath, trying to momentarily forget about his raging desire as well as his own insecurity. Calmly looking at Zoro, he asked, "What is it?" Once the words left his mouth, he was surprised at how easy they had been to say.

The swordsman grinned mirthfully, sitting upright. "Tch, I guess I just feel like I should warn you," he said, starting to pull off his shirt, "it looks a hell of a lot worse than it used to."

Zoro adeptly yanked the shirt off with his single arm, revealing an impossible number of scars and gouges across his muscular body. The slash on his chest—the one that had been left by Hawk-Eyes Mihawk, right after Sanji had first met the swordsman—was no longer the most obvious scar on his body, as it had been repeatedly covered by other similarly gruesome imperfections.

Without thinking, Sanji leaned forward toward Zoro until his face was only inches from his chest, tracing his fingers over the lines of the scars and gouges, wide-eyed as he took in how bad some of the injuries must have been. Some of them even looked rather recent—near his left shoulder and abdomen, there were large slashes that were still quite pink.

His lust momentarily forgotten, Sanji slowly studied his body, taking in all the new detail. The chef's hand slowly began to move toward that gruesome-looking arm—that stump, cut off just below the shoulder. He knitted his brows as his hand brushed it, and he felt Zoro's body stiffen slightly.

He didn't linger for long, though. A moment later, he leaned forward, moving his hands to his back, resting his chin on Zoro's shoulder. He immediately noticed that there were large hunks of flesh missing near one of his shoulder-blades; he wasn't even sure what could have caused such a macabre injury.

Recalling how Zoro used to fight, though, it wasn't so surprising. When he was in the mindset of needing to win, he seemed nearly incapable of self-preservation.

"Idiot," Sanji muttered under his breath, once he had taken in all of the new details of his body. He wrapped his arms around Zoro's back and pulled him close. Even if the swordsman hadn't explained, he could see most of these wounds were caused from fighting, and not from the accident. Even if the swordsman never told him, each of these scars and gouges represented one more time that Zoro risked cutting his life short; and if that had happened, Sanji would have never even gotten to know he was still here.

Embracing him tightly, Sanji wondered if this was okay; to just sit there and hold him like that, even though lust was supposed to be the reason they were there. But suddenly, this seemed far more urgent that any desire.

Then he felt Zoro's arm reach around his shoulders, gripping him tightly in return, and he sighed in relief. For awhile, the two men just sat there, heads on each others shoulders.

Recalling the past, their stubborn, young selves trying to act nonchalant and disinterested in each other, even when they were greedily clinging to each other in the throes of passion, Sanji suddenly laughed.

It was a deep, genuine laugh that seemed to start in his abdomen and slowly work its way upward, until it broke free. The cook raised a hand and grabbed the back of Zoro's hair, grasping the coarse gray-and-green strands as his mirthful laugh filled the room.

"Oi, what the hell's so funny?" Zoro asked, unable to pull away to look at his face while he gripped the back of his head like that.

"I was just thinking about what a shitty kid I was."

"Hah?"

"I would've kicked you into a wall for this back then," Sanji chuckled.

"I'm wondering if you still might," the swordsman admitted.

The laughter died down, and when Sanji spoke again, his voice was considerably more solemn. "There's no reason for me to do that anymore. I've come to terms with a lot of things since back then."

Finally, he started to pull away, and Zoro loosened the grip around his shoulders.

"Eh, it's not like I was much better," Zoro admitted.

"Yeah, true."

"Oi, don't agree that easily."

"Then don't say things that are so obviously right," Sanji smirked.

Zoro grinned broadly, that unfettered grin that Sanji honestly felt like he never got to see very much, even back when they were together on the Thousand Sunny, spending day in and day out in each other's presence. It was a rare delight, and rarer still that it was just for him.

Unthinkingly, Sanji leaned toward Zoro, pushing him backward sharply so that his back was flat on the bed once again.

Putting a leg on either side of his hips, Sanji leaned down until their lips connected. He wanted the other man like he had wanted nothing else in the innumerable gray and dull years that had passed him by.

"I want the same thing you do," Sanji said, referring to the swordsman's earlier comment. "Like we used to..."

"Ah," Zoro nodded.

They struggled a moment to remove the rest of their clothes, and then they were finally naked. Sanji felt like he could barely breath as he felt that familiar, muscular body pressing against his... And that familiar _hardness_ brushing against his own.

Both men sat up, and Zoro's lips tantalizingly pressed against Sanji's chest, a tongue occasionally flicking out to trace the sensitive places that he somehow seemed to remember so well.

"You're still so much like you used to be," Zoro commented. Sanji started to reply, but lips momentarily grazed a nipple, and instead he only whimpered in response.

"Why the hell wouldn't I be," he shot back.

Zoro chuckled, bringing his mouth back up to Sanji's, giving him a hungry-but-gentle kiss. "Ah, I guess I was just comparing you to me, that's all."

Sanji shook his head. "You're a little worse for the wear, but you're the same too," he said, his voice unintentionally tinged with sadness. He reached out to brush the side of the swordsman's face, his fingers grazing the chunk of his left earlobe that was now missing.

Raising an eyebrow, Zoro commented, "You don't seem to bothered by some of these things." For a moment, he pulled his left arm away from Sanji, unconsciously touching the stump of his right arm.

"Why would I be?" Sanji said simply. "Tch, you were always covered in scars, so this is nothing new for me."

Before the swordsman could say another word, Sanji leaned over and kissed him, slowly pushing him back against the bed as their tongues slid back and forth against each other.

"How do you want to start?" Sanji asked, pulling away momentarily. His body ached with an unfamiliar lust; he hadn't wanted anyone this badly in so long.

Zoro's hand reached down, engulfing his engorgement so that it surged with pleasure and a screaming desire for relief. "Can I have you first?"

"Tch, as long as that's not all you're up for."

"I may be old, but I'm not dead," Zoro smirked.

They changed positions, so that the swordsman was now laying on top of him, and Sanji felt his pulse quicken incrementally as Zoro readied his body. The way they used to do it was nothing in particular, but he was startled at how much the other man seemed to _remember_ his body.

All the familiar places he sought, the sensitive spots that he had painstakingly discovered when they had snuck away to do it again and again. Sanji had never thought much of it at the time, but he had never had another lover who had taken the time to learn what he liked the way Zoro had. Ah, but then, he had never really had a lover with whom he felt anything even remotely close to the sensation of love.

* * *

_**A slightly better hotel than what they were used to**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

Sanji's brow furrowed in his sleep, an unpleasant dream temporarily hijacking his mind. He awoke with a start, the memory of the nightmare all but gone the second his eyes snapped open.

_You don't really know what love is_.

An unidentifiable whisper flitting across his mind was the only remnant left. Although the voice seemed to belong to no one in particular, Sanji did recall the phrase being spoke to him more than a few times, each time by a different person. Every time it happened, however, he had never given it further thought.

Yet for some reason, at that moment, he was breathing hard, and he could feel a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead, despite the chill in the air.

Distracted by his startling physical reactions to a mere dream, it took him a few extra seconds to realize where he was. He was, most assuredly, not on board the Thousand Sunny; and what was more, the back pressed against his chest, and the ribcage he had his arms wrapped around, most definitely belonged to a very familiar marimo.

Why the hell was he clinging to the swordsman, anyway? Inwardly cursing, he start to pull his body away, but Zoro started to stir, and he did not really want to wake him up.

With a sigh, he allowed his body to relax, and after settling down for a few moments, he realized it wasn't that bad being against the other man like this. He had no idea why his body has sought out such a position while they slept, but it was definitely him and not Zoro who had initiated such a position, so he couldn't reasonably blame the marimo.

As his breathing began to steady, he realized that he still felt sort of anxious from the dream. He hated it when this happened; emotions lingering from a dream, particularly from one leaving behind such a cryptic message.

He tilted his head forward, until his forehead pressed against soft, green hair. He inhaled deeply, breathing in the smell of salty sweat and steel. It shouldn't have been a pleasant smell, but it was so deeply ingrained that it was the familiar smell belonging to the marimo, he couldn't say he disliked it.

Sanji's eyelids began to grow heavy, and he unconsciously wrapped his arms around Zoro a little bit more tightly. He was vaguely aware that the swordsman let out a faint murmur and raised his arm, wrapping it above Sanji's, but the cook was already about to drift to sleep.

The last thought he had was probably his groggy mind arguing with himself that he did, indeed, know what love was, but he would never remember it.

* * *

_**Sanji's bedroom**_

_**Present time, a short while later**_

Though it was the same man who he had shared so many nights with all those years ago, for some reason, there was satisfaction beyond what he was capable of understanding in his youthful

days.

This time, there was no shame or fear. There was no hesitation within him. He no longer had his stupid, arrogant streak that made him act like he didn't want this, when he ached for it.

And maybe, just maybe, he could allow himself to be slightly honest with himself.

Things were different now; they would never again have to pretend they didn't actually want to stay with each other until morning. There was no need for smokescreens and flimsy excuses. There was no fear.

Except, maybe, the fear that this wasn't real.

But the feeling of Zoro inside of him was all too vivid for it to be a dream or a hallucination. The feeling of a rough, fervid hand touching him down there, those familiar fingers wrapped around his impossibly stiffened member. The sweat, commingling with his own.

And the taste of the sweet, hungry kisses that he missed more than two decades of melancholy had ever made him realize.

When they came, he almost cried out to stop, because he didn't want it to end. The thought of it being over was too much for him to take.

But a passionate hand and mouth quickly reassured him that it wasn't over. After they took a few minutes to recover, Sanji felt himself being impelled to shift his position, and then he was on top of the swordsman again. Then instinct took over as Sanji repeated what Zoro had just done to him.

The way they used to do it... There was no rhyme or reason to it, no method or schedule. It was just this; the two of them taking lustful turns as to who would take or be taken. Sanji had always internally fought with himself over which he preferred, because logically, he should have hated to be taken. But now, experiencing it all over again, he came to the conclusion he should have come to all along: they both were quite good.


	9. Chapter 9

**CHAPTER NINE**

_**Sanji's bedroom**_

_**A couple of hours later**_

Sanji was exhausted, but there was too much adrenaline and uncertainty swimming in his veins for him to possibly sleep. Having one urge satiated, he was feeling the desire for another licking at the edges of his consciousness... That craving was probably just the after-effects of the assault of nostalgia on his brain, however, as he tasted a body he never thought he would lay eyes on again, let alone get to enjoy so fully and without restraint. It still felt surreal.

He shrugged himself slightly upright, propping up his head in his hand as he stared at the other man, taking him in, feeling some faint semblance of relief over just getting to _see _him. Zoro laid on his back with his eye closed, his arm resting over his forehead.

"What?" Zoro asked finally, no doubt feeling the steady gaze fixed upon him. He opened his eye a sliver and glanced over at Sanji.

"It's nothing," he replied, averting his stare, hesitant to share the superfluous thought swirling around in his head.

Zoro turned his head toward him, looking at him a bit more alertly. Suddenly he reached out and placed a firm thumb on Sanji's forehead, applying pressure to iron out the deep furrows that had formed above his brow. "Nothing, huh?"

"Don't worry about it, it's really... It doesn't matter."

"If it doesn't matter, then just spit it out."

The cook exhaled loudly. "It's just... it's been so long since I wanted a cigarette this damn bad," he finally admitted.

"That so?" Zoro smirked. "I find that hard to believe."

"It's true. It was bad for awhile... Damn near unbearable, in fact," Sanji confessed, smiling wryly. "But after awhile, I felt like I didn't even want to anymore."

"And how long ago was that?"

Sanji knitted his brow; it had been a long time since he had thought about it. He turned toward Zoro, who was now also propping himself on his side, his arm holding up his head.

"A bit over twenty years," he murmured quietly, his expression darkening.

"Was it because of..." Zoro started to ask, furrowing his brow, the corners of his lips turning downward nearly undiscernably.

"No," Sanji replied quickly, before the swordsman could find the rest of his words. It had nothing to do with his health or Chopper's warnings or anything along those lines.

Zoro did not respond. Instead, he stared at him, his gaze filled with patience as he awaited the continuation of Sanji's explanation.

Sanji sighed with resignation, wondering if there was any point to repeating such a meaningless memory. But, there was no reason not to, and the swordsman's stare continued to burn into him. Hesitantly, he started to speak.

* * *

_**That godawful, cliff-covered island somewhere in the New World**_

_**Over twenty years ago**_

For days, Sanji barely slept, spending most of his time digging through the broken pieces of gravel and rock. Everyone else had begun taking turns, so some could rest while others searched—with the exception of Luffy, who searched for his lost nakama with a frenzy rivaling the cook's, but tinged with a hint of madness. However, Sanji just could not bring himself to rest. He couldn't sleep knowing that maybe, the swordsman was buried out there, likely injured and suffering.

He had been trying not to consider the notion that it was improbable he was still alive... that he was now searching for a corpse. But even then, he had to lay eyes on him again; he had to _know._

When Sanji wasn't in the water, he chain-smoked constantly, going through packs at more than double the usual pace. Not even the nicotine and smoke could alleviate him in the slightest, but that didn't stop him from trying—even if he broke into intermittent coughing spurts. Even if he felt like he couldn't quite stay under water as long as he used to, even when the dives were for such a critical purpose.

Ten infinitely long days passed, each one feeling more grim than the next. After ten days of searching, the crew had to come to a very difficult decision; Sanji had never felt so helpless and distressed and consumed by rage in all his life.

Even when they were preparing to finally leave, he was still crawling over the rocks, his clothes tattered and his hair disheveled, as he continued to search up until the very last second. And finally, the ship was ready to embark, and his nakama called out to him, urging him aboard.

He looked up at the Thousand Sunny for a moment, then back toward island, his cigarette loosely hanging off of his lips. Knee-deep in water, his clothes filled with sand, he stared helplessly at the rubble that they had overturned twice-over, to no avail.

If they left, he was really gone, he realized. It was really, truly the end.

Why did his last conversation with the shitty marimo have to be over something as dumb as cigarettes, he wondered angrily. Suddenly, the cigarette in his mouth seemed revolting. The smoke in his mouth tasted of death and misery.

Silently shaking, he struggled to restrain whatever emotion threatened to spew forth. He felt ill, thinking that if it wasn't for a shitty cigarette, maybe his last words to Zoro could have been something fractionally less despicable.

Furiously, he wrenched the cigarette out of his mouth and hurled it down into the water with all of the force he could muster. But it wasn't enough. He grabbed the pack from inside his front pocket, and after crushed it with a trembling hand, he threw it after the cigarette. Finally, after he boarded the ship, avoiding the empathetic glances of his nakama, he retrieved every last cigarette he knew of on the ship. As the shitty, cliff-ridden island began to disappear in the distance, Sanji hurled the packs far into the ocean beyond.

* * *

_**Sanji's kitchen**_

_**The next morning**_

Sanji was preparing breakfast.

It was strange; he had been cooking in this kitchen for fifteen years or so. He had made thousands of meals, including the same, simple breakfast of eggs and sausage he was about to complete.

But for some reason, the food seemed to a cook a little more perfectly. The aroma was more pleasant, and indeed, even his kitchen appeared a bit less drab than usual. The vague ache in the pit of his stomach, tinged with a hint of glee, seemed hauntingly familiar, but he could not quite make the connection between it and how he felt cooking in his younger days as a chef; the memory was too distant.

Zoro entered the kitchen, wearing nothing but a pair of pants and a yawn, just as Sanji was plating their food.

"You hungry?" Sanji asked, glancing back over his shoulder. He nearly started in surprise; the swordsman's silver-tinged hair, glistening wet in the late morning sun, appeared far more green than it had in the soft evening lights the night before. Realizing he was gaping, Sanji quickly clamped his mouth closed and turned his attention back to the meal.

"Ah, starving," Zoro replied, taking a seat at the small table in the kitchen.

A moment later, Sanji set their plates on the table and joined him.

"I made some coffee, if you'd like some," Sanji said, beckoning to the pot he had already set on the table.

Zoro nodded, already hungrily digging into the plate. He took his first bite as Sanji started to pour his cup of coffee.

Suddenly, Zoro clapped his hand over his mouth, dropping his fork. Sanji slammed the pot down on the table, springing to his feet in alarm and leaning forward.

"Oi, are you okay? What's wrong?" he asked with panic. He had no idea what had happened. There was surely nothing wrong with his food. For a split second, he thought perhaps the swordsman was choking.

Zoro glanced up at him, removing his hand from his mouth and gesturing for Sanji to sit back down. "It's okay, sit down," he mumbled through a full mouth.

As Zoro stared down at the table, taking what seemed like an eternity to chew and swallow his bite, Sanji sat on the edge of his seat, nervously watching him.

Finally, he looked up. "Sorry, it's just... This is the first time I've eaten food you've actually cooked since I've been here, isn't it?"

Sanji's jaw fell open slightly. "Y-yeah, I suppose that's right... It's my recipes at the restaurant, but I rarely cook anything myself."

Zoro closed his eye. "That's what I figured."

"Oi, is there something wrong with it?"

He shook his head from side to side. "No, there's nothing wrong with it. It's—"

"Let me guess... '_It's okay,'"_ Sanji interrupted, dropping his voice exaggeratedly low, as he mimicked the response the infuriating swordsman used to give him again and again, whenever Sanji asked him how his meal was.

"It's good," Zoro rumbled solemnly, opening his eye. The words seemed to cut across the silence of the room, and Sanji felt the breath catch in his throat.

"It was always really good, dumbass cook," Zoro muttered finally.

The swordsman continued eating his meal in silence, and Sanji didn't know what else to say. He was starting to feel like his appetite was waning a bit. Sipping his coffee, he intermittently glanced up at the shirtless, scar-covered man, who calmly chewed and swallowed bite after bite with a zenful expression on his face.

Just one day ago, this scenario could not have existed in even the most remote realm of possibilities.

Only a mere twenty-four hours ago, Zoro had been dead and gone, only existing as a ghost in the darkest crevices of his mind; a specter who took sick joy in creeping into his consciousness, endlessly haunting him.

Yesterday, as he had sat at the same table, sipping coffee out of the very same mug, the swordsman Isshin had been just an irritating man who shared an uncomfortable amount of similarities with that man he used to know. He had never once even imagined they were one in the same... He had spent too many years believing Zoro was lost forever for the notion to cross his mind for even an instant, right up until that moment that Zoro had revealed who he truly was.

Sanji had briefly thought that having Zoro back would solve everything. But now that the swordsman was before him again, the unsettled feeling that had constantly plagued him for the past twenty years was still ever-present within himself. Perhaps to many things had happened... Too many unforgivable, unforgettable things. Frowning, Sanji struggled to swallow the last few bites of food on his plate.

* * *

_**Trois Bleu**_

_**That evening**_

As long as he repeated the same actions as the day before, life would be tolerable.

The mantra Sanji had used to survive all these years was quickly slipping away from him, though. The numbing euphoria of being reunited with Zoro the night before was slowly dissipating, as the reality of it began to crash down upon him.

The truth was, the cook didn't really remember how to live any other way than through mindless repetition. Though he had been able to get so many things off of his chest when he was together with Zoro, even with some of those weights lifted, he was no longer actually familiar with how to live his life, other than by going through the motions. And he certainly did not recall how he was supposed to deal with all of these crippling feelings washing over him.

The cook actually did not expect Zoro to come to Trois Bleu tonight. When Zoro finally came to the restaurant, Sanji was so startled, he nearly dropped the armful of dishes he was about to deliver to a table.

But the reason for his shock was not simply his presence. Today, instead of the familiar all-black garb of Isshin sitting at the table near the back, there was a man with one arm, two swords and short, mossy green hair riddled with silver.

Once he delivered the plates, he made a beeline toward the swordsman, his heart pounding thunderously in his chest.

"Oi, what the hell are you doing?" Sanji asked, in a kind of frantic whisper.

"Hah? What kind of question is that?" Zoro replied. "I'm hungry."

"Yeah, but why are you dressed like that?"

Zoro glanced down at his attire. He was wearing another long-sleeved shirt—leaving the sleeve hanging down over his absent right arm—and the same style of pants and boots that Isshin usually wore. But other than that, he didn't wear any other of his trademark clothes. No mask. No headdress. He was exposing his face, plain as day.

"What, you have a dress code or something?"

"That's not what I mean, marimo," Sanji hissed. "You're not hiding your appearance."

Zoro raised an impatient eyebrow, giving him a look that told Sanji the swordsman thought he was being positively stupid. "Isn't that pointless? You know who I am now, and there's no one else here I need to hide myself from."

Sanji stared at him, dumbfounded. "But that's how you're recognized... It's how people know you as the world's strongest swordsman."

Zoro nodded. "Ah, that's right. I didn't say I'll never wear those clothes again, but they can be a pain to eat in."

"And why are you here?" Sanji suddenly asked, the question becoming even more pressing than why Zoro was not dressed as Isshin.

"Hah, didn't I already answer that? I'm here for food. Why the hell else would I come to a restaurant?"

"Yeah, but I guess I didn't..." Sanji paused, scratching his head as he averted his gaze. "I wasn't sure if you'd come by anymore."

"Hah, why not?" Zoro asked. "I still need to eat, after all. Besides, I also wanted to ask you something."

"What?"

Zoro leaned forward slightly, looking up at him with a startlingly intense gaze. "Can I come again tonight... _Sanji_?"

An involuntary shudder; he wished the swordsman would not use his name so plainly, especially in this public place. And once again, he seemed to draw out the vowels in a way that made his stomach jump into his chest.

"Tch, since when do you ask before coming by?"

"That a yes, then?"

Sanji sighed. "I won't tell you no."

"Good. Because I want to see you again." The corner of the swordsman's mouth turned up in a smile. "So, what should I eat, cook?"

Sanji was stunned. For a moment, he felt like he had no idea who this outspoken man was, who plainly spoke of what he wanted... Things that Sanji wanted as well, but that he was sure he could not articulate so freely.

* * *

_**Sanji's living room**_

_**Later that night**_

After leaving Trois Bleu, Sanji found Zoro on his patio, sprawled out on one of the chairs, mouth agape and snoring loudly. He was wearing the same clothes he had worn earlier to the restaurant; this was Zoro, not Isshin.

Sighing, Sanji opened the patio door and poked his head outside. "Oi, come on in," he called out gruffly.

Zoro languidly opened his eye, turning in the other man's direction. "Ah, you're here," he said, his voice a little bit warmer than Sanji expected it to be.

"Yeah. You coming in?"

Nodding, the green-and-silver-haired man rose to his feet.

"So, what'll it be? You know what I have as far as liquor, and I picked up some more sake as well," Sanji told him, sliding the door closed once Zoro had stepped inside.

"Nothing right now."

"Nothing?" Sanji asked, taken aback, turning to look at him. But then, stalwart fingers reached around and brushed the back of his neck, entangling in the back of his hair, and the breath caught in his throat. As Zoro leaned toward him, Sanji could see from the look in his eye, he had no interest in liquor.

"There's something else I want," Zoro went on, his mouth leaning in toward Sanji's. "But if I can't have it, tell me."

"Tch, what kind of line is that," Sanji murmured, before responding, "Well, I won't tell you no." Somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized he had told the swordsman that a few times already.

And then, there was no more time to think about insignificant details like words, as heavy lips crushed against his. Even though he had tasted those lips so many times the night before, he still felt like his palpitating heart was likely to thrash out of his chest. Fingers clutched at his hair, yanking at the tendrils, and Sanji murmured and deepened the kiss in response.

Sanji realized the reason he could barely contain the emotion in his chest. Last night was not a fluke; not only was he was feeling_ something, _but it was something that made his heart ache with a strange amalgamation of joy and sorrow. After so much time had passed of endless apathy, feelings he had long since cast aside flooded his senses.

And how he _wanted_. Unconsciously, he ground his body against Zoro's, letting out a gasp of satisfaction as the other man's erection rubbed against his own. Even through their clothes, he could feel just how much they both craved each other.

The chef felt like he could barely breathe, from the mix of panic and lust that overtook his body, filling him with unbearable anxiety and trepidation. Despite all the years he had had to regret all of the things he never said to Zoro, and how he had not come to his senses back then, now that this man was in front of him, he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

So, all he could do was react; to desperately tear off clothes and cover the other man's neck in fervent kisses and bites. To take the other man's pulsating hardness within his hands and just thrust, and let himself get overtaken by greed and desire as the other man's scarred face contorted in pleasure.

There was no way they would make it to the bedroom; Sanji was skeptical that he could even wait until they got to the sofa. He _needed_, in a way that he had not needed anything for two decades, and he impatiently reached down, readying his body for the intercourse that he couldn't wait for another moment.

Although Sanji had now had an entire day to let it sink in that this was really Zoro, he still found himself wondering if he was lost in one of those dreams that had consumed him up until this time. But again and again, the swordsman eagerly reminded him that this was not a dream, and every touch made Sanji feel like it was less and less easy to deal with the reality of the situation.

It was the start of many evenings, just like this one, where Sanji started to feel less and less sure of what he was supposed to do, despite how clearly he wanted this one thing in front of him. The scars of the past were too deep to disappear just from the reemergence of Zoro—and the cook was far past the point of being able to figure out how to help himself. It had been far too long since Sanji had really cared about anything.

* * *

_**An island near All Blue**_

_**Eighteen years ago**_

Sanji sat at a table with half a dozen fishermen, disinterestedly sipping bitter coffee and eating undercooked toast while the rest of the men savagely devoured their breakfast.

"From the sounds of it, we'll be passin' by one of the Fisherman Islands by this evening, if we set out soon," the man next to Sanji said to him through a full mouth. Although he hadn't explained himself very well, Sanji knew he was referring to the artificial islands around All Blue.

"Well, I guess we'll be parting ways soon, then," Sanji said, scratching the side of his cheek. The sound of his fingernails scraping the stubble was offensively loud to him. It had been awhile since he had last shaved, though; it was probably more of a beard than stubble by now. Even longer since he had cut his hair, which he currently had pulled back into a messy ponytail.

"You sure you don't wanna stick around with us? I can prob'ly pay you a little bit more, since you're able to handle so much."

Sanji shook his head. "No, my mind is set on going to this island." He smiled, turning his vacant gaze toward the man who had been his boss for the past several months. "But thanks for letting me work on your boat until we got here. I don't know how else I would have made it."

"No no, I should be thankin' you. You're as good as three of these louts put together," he said, pointing at the other men at his table and laughing heartily. A few of them cursed back at him in protest. "I expect no less from a man who was part a' that pirate crew, though."

Sanji clenched his jaw. "Ah, thanks," he said blandly.

The fishing boat captain laughed again, mirthfully slamming a fist on the table. Sanji's half-empty cup of coffee fell over, and he quickly grabbed a napkin to stop the dark liquid from making too large of a mess.

At the precise moment he leaned forward, he heard a gunshot ring out and felt something whiz behind his head, grazing his hair. Instinctively, he leapt away, taking cover as his eyes searched the crowd for the source of the shot. "Everybody get down," he shouted to the men he was with.

Then he spotted the culprit—no one he recognized, but it wouldn't be the first time a stranger attacked him, just for who he was, even if it wasn't about bounties anymore. Taking a deep breath, he sprung into action, leaping through the air with his right foot outstretched, soaring directly toward his attacker.

One blow was all it took; the man was weak, hiding behind the strength of his gun for power. Once he was felled, Sanji nonchalantly walked back toward the table of fisherman and returned to his seat.

"We'll I'll be... Are you okay, Sanji?!" the fishing boat captain cried out, cautiously rising to his feet.

"I'm fine," Sanji said languidly.

"Oi, your hair," one of the other man shouted, pointing at the back of the blonde man's head.

Sanji raised a hand, feeling the back of his head—and instantly realized what the fisherman was talking about. The bullet had grazed his ponytail, and half of the hair was blown away.

"Well, I guess I needed to cut it anyway," Sanji shrugged, leaning back in his seat.

The table of fisherman stared at him in awe. But then, the captain chuckled again, slapping his knee, and the table erupted into chatter about how Sanji was completely undaunted, and how something like this must have been nothing for a man like him.

If it hadn't been for their blather, Sanji may not have ruminated on it that much, but he did recognize that his absence of a reaction was unnatural. Even if he was used to his safety being in jeopardy, it was abnormal to be unfazed by imminent danger.

Someone had just tried to shoot him from a mere thirty steps away, in broad daylight, and he was not even the slightest bit rattled. His heart wasn't racing, and there was no rush of adrenaline flowing through his body. Even his attack had been more out of muscle-memory than actually feeling outraged enough to take out the person who had just tried to snuff out his life.

Sanji knew that if he had not leaned forward to wipe up the spilled coffee, right at that moment, the bullet would have undoubtedly pierced through his brain.

The only thing that Sanji found even remotely upsetting was the thought that it hadn't.


End file.
